"Honest John" Sparks (30 August 1843-22 May 1908) was the Silverite Governor of Nevada from 5 January 1903 to 22 May 1908, succeeding Reinhold Sadler and preceding Denver S. Dickerson.
Biography[]
John Sparks was born in Winston County, Mississippi in 1843, and his family followed the frontier through Arkansas and Texas in 1857. John worked as a cowboy before serving in the Texas Rangers against the Comanche during the American Civil War. In 1873, he drove a large herd to Wyoming and settled on a ranch near Cheyenne, later ranching along the North Platte River and building a mansion in Georgetown, Texas. On his wife's death in 1879, Sparks decided to claim rangeland west of the Rockies in Elko, Nevada in 1881, and he settled on a ranch south of Reno in 1885 and sold pure-blood Hereford cattle. He served as Governor of Nevada from 1903 to 1908, forming a state railroad commission and the Nevada State Police, enacting an eight-hour work day for miners, and creating the state engineering office. He died in office in 1908.