Biohazard Cleanup Near Sutro Dayton, NV

Dayton is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Lyon County, Nevada, with 15,153 residents at the 2020 census, and it is the second-oldest Nevada settlement after Genoa and home to the oldest hotel in the state.

Dayton began as Ponderers Rest and Gold Canon, where Abner Blackburn discovered a gold nugget in nearby Gold Creek in 1849 and placer miners settled at the mouth of Gold Canon in 1850.

The town officially adopted the name Dayton in 1861 after local surveyor John Day, became the governmental seat of Lyon County on November 29, 1861, and grew as the first major milling center of the Comstock, from 78 residents in 1860 to 2,500 in 1865, with its 1864 courthouse one of the first in Nevada.

Devastating fires in 1866 and 1870 greatly reduced the town, and after fire destroyed the Lyon County Courthouse in 1909 the county seat moved to Yerington in 1911.

Dayton grew from 826 residents in 1970 to 8,964 in 2010 and 15,153 in 2020, an increase of 69.0 percent between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, and the 2020 census counted 5,859 households and 6,114 housing units in the community.

In 1961 Dayton won fame as a setting for John Huston's film The Misfits, the last movie appearances of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe.

The historic part of Dayton is within the Comstock Historic District and features Odeon Hall, the Union Hotel built in the early 1870s, and a local museum in an 1865 schoolhouse that is the oldest in Nevada in its original location, and Dayton is listed as Nevada Historical Marker 7.

Dayton sits at a bend in the Carson River at the western end of the Twenty-Six Mile Desert, about 12 miles east of Carson City, with U.S. Route 50 passing through the community, and the Dayton census-designated place covers about 34.9 square miles.

Dayton's public schools are in the Lyon County School District and include Dayton High School, Dayton Intermediate School, Dayton Elementary School, and Sutro Elementary School.

The 2020 census gave Dayton a median age of 45.5 years, with 21.0 percent of residents under 18 and 23.8 percent aged 65 or older.