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A glimpse of time
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius once said, “Time is a kind of river, an irresistible flood sweeping up men and events and carrying them headlong, one after the other, to the great sea of being.”
For more than a century, the faces of the clock atop the Vernon County Courthouse have looked out upon Nevada and the surrounding countryside, ticking away the minutes and hours of each day. Countless people see it each day and don’t see it at all. Fewer still, have the opportunity to see beyond the clock’s faces and into its workings.
Just getting to the clock is an adventure itself up. There is no elevator in the clock tower. From the third floor of the courthouse, the staircase sits next to the circuit court secretary’s desk and wraps around two sides of the room on its climb into the ceiling more than 20 feet above — and an empty room. The clock mechanism is still two floors higher.
Occasionally, a small group of people will be granted a glimpse inside the clock tower, and back in time.
On Wednesday, April 5, a small group of five curious souls were led by the clock’s caretaker and courthouse custodian Rick Warren up the stairs into the clock tower. They were accompanied by Bushwhacker Museum director Will Tollerton, who had arranged the tour as a fundraiser.
Chris Ellis, Charlotte Buerge, Scott Buerge, Bob Estes, and Lyndon Irwin took part in the tour, a portion of which consisted of Tollerton reading from Irwin’s own research into the history of the clock.
Irwin’s research led him to Nevada Daily Mail, Weekly Post, and Southwest Post articles from 1907 and 1908, and a Nevada Herald article from 1938.
Irwin writes, “A large Seth Thomas Tower Clock and an 800-pound bell arrived in August 1907. They were to be installed in the tower of the new courthouse as soon as the tower was ready. The clock was expensive but the $1,200 was donated by local businessman A. B. Cockerill.
The workings of the new clock were described in the Weekly Post in November 1907. The tower was nearly completed but they were waiting for the glass dials to arrive. They had originally intended to use wooden dials but decided to install glass dials so they could be illuminated at night. The new clock had to be wound every eight days and it struck on the hours. The pendulum was four feet long and weighed about 150 pounds. The clock weighed 2,300 pounds boxed. A small dial in the center of the works was used to set the clock, as the big dial could not be seen by the operator. The clock was set by a crank device, each turn advancing the hands one minute.
Another report told that the total weight of the dials was 1,650 pounds and the diameter of each dial was seven feet. Although the clock was an eight-day clock, it had been decided to wind it every seven days. It took fifteen minutes to wind. The pendulum of the clock was constructed so it would overcome expansion and contraction of the metal parts in cold or hot weather. The bell was placed on the first opening below the clock dials. There was no glass in those windows so that sound could escape. It was noted that on a clear day, the bell could readily be heard for three or four miles. The clock was set to strike on the hour and half hour.
Lightning hit the new county courthouse during a heavy rainstorm in August 1908. The bolt struck the tip of the spire on top of the tower and shattered the top tile ball causing tile fragments to fall into the street. It appeared that when the bolt struck, numerous forks of electricity shattered tiles in about twenty places. At every place where lightning struck, one tile was shattered but no long gashes were torn in the roof. This was considered a good test for the new courthouse. H. E. Williams was standing in the west entrance with one hand on one of the marble columns and he received quite a shock. At the sheriff’s office, Deputy Sheriff McKnight thought there had been a terrific explosion nearby. Lightning had followed the telephone wires into the office and it was brightly illuminated. The telephones in both the courthouse and in the sheriff’s office were burned out.”
Gone though are the gears, pendulum, and weights. They were removed in 1980 and replaced by an electric motor a little bigger than a baseball. This motor drives a gear box which in turn drives the arms of the clock. The actual timepiece is four stories below in a storage area near the circuit court offices.
The western face has a new piece of glass in the center — the original was blown out and destroyed in the 1995 micro-burst. Names of visitors adorn a wooden ladder and the bricks around the clock faces.
The only easily accessible outside view from the clock tower is from atop the stairway in the belfry through a dirty arched window above the louvers which lets the sound pass to the outside. This window looks out over Main Street and the west side of the square.
Warren said he comes to that window in the belfry sometimes to watch storms come in from the west.
Tollerton said the tours are infrequent but can be arranged if there are enough people interested in participating.
At the end of the tour, Warren was the last to come out through the hatch in the ceiling of the circuit court office, closing it behind him as countless caretakers have done in the past. Only time will tell if the courthouse, its clock tower and clock will celebrate their bicentennial in 2107.