A version of this article first appeared in the Reno Gazette Journal on Oct. 14, 2007.

"Nevada's first state seal had a mistake on it," wrote Gary BeDunnah in "Discovering Nevada," a school text published in 1994. "The smoke from the train and the mill blew in opposite directions."

There has been a longstanding belief in Nevada that the smoke from the passenger train locomotive and the quartz mill should have been blowing in the same direction on the original state seal. Some claim the smoke blowing in opposite directions was a hoax perpetrated by Territorial Enterprise reporter Mark Twain and some of his associates.

The claim has nothing to do with the design of the state seal as promulgated in the 1863 and 1864 state constitutional conventions in Carson City and officially adopted by

See Full Page