Vya
Though Long Valley was crossed as early as the 1840s by emigrants bound for Oregon, it wasn't until the passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act in February 1909 that an agricultural interest in the valley developed. The new act allowed for the homesteading of 320 acre dryland parcels, while only requiring the cultivation of eighty acres. Among the first homesteaders to arrive were Roy & Artie Wimer, whose young daughter Vya would lend her name to the new post office when it opened in 1910 (some stories claim that Vya Wimer was the first white child born in Long Valley, but she was actually born in Lake City, California in 1904). A school was opened, and by June 1915 a store operated by Layton Mariette served the valley. During the earliest years, too, ambitious plans were made by the Long Valley Land & Development for a system of irrigation ditches and a reservoir fed by West, Middle, and Massacre Lake to the east of Vya.
The ill-fated irrigation project was never completed, as the lakes could not provide a stable water supply. In addition, the earliest years of farming in Long Valley had been particularly wet ones, but by the early 1920s normal drought conditions returned and crops quickly failed. By 1930, only twenty-five households were recorded, a number which continued to decline. The establishment of the Sheldon Antelope Refuge in 1931 as well as a CCC Camp in the middle of the decade provided some relief; nevertheless the regional population dropped to only fifty by the 1940 census. By 1941, both the school and post office were closed. Though a few ranches, mostly used for spring and summer grazing, still function throughout the region, Vya today is the 'center' of one of Nevada's most remote corners and likely appears much the same as it did prior to 1909.
