CHAPTER ONE

THE EARLY YEARS

1864 TO 1890

n northeastern Nevada is the town of Elko. At the corner of Fifth and Commercial is a western saddle shop that makes the gear which is so important to men and women who use horses in their daily lives. Whether they are called cowboys, vaqueros, or buckaroos, they can find everything they need in Elko. The store is J.M. Capriola’s, with its downstairs display area and steep staircase to the saddle making shop above. Capriola’s is the living embodiment of the legacy of silver and saddles that began nearly a century and a half ago, almost 1,000 miles away in California near Mission San Luis Obispo. That is where Guadalupe G. Garcia and his wife Maria Jesus came to live after leaving their home in Sonora, Mexico.