History channel: Local YouTuber Steve Ellison tells the stories of Reno’s past, one abandoned building at a time 

Given my interests in local history and beer, it was almost inevitable that The Algorithm would suggest an episode from local YouTuber Steve Ellison’s channel, The Reno You Know.  

It’s become my go-to side quest when I have a half-hour or so of free time—not enough to watch a movie, just a little downtime to be a media consumer. I pull up my “watch later” menu, pick one, and dive into a little history lesson from local days gone by. I’m a pretty big fan at this point and wanted to spread the word, so Steve and I met up at Pigeon Head Brewery (purely by coincidence, where he wrapped his first episode) for a beer and to talk about his channel. 

Ellison—the curious, horseshoe-mustachioed star of The Reno You Know—was first inspired by childhood visits to historic sites and that feeling of awe walking in the very places where history took place.  

“I still experience a sense of wonderment when I visit a historic site,” he said. “It’s as if the people who were participating created something larger than ourselves. I got that early on when my folks took me to the Gettysburg battlefield when I was a kid, and that stays with me to this day.” 

After attending university in Southern California, he landed in Reno in 1986 due to a job transfer to a city he’d never even visited, much less considered as a place to live. A successful photography business followed (along with playing guitar in local rock ’n’ roll bands and oil painting on the side), and his interest in history continued to grow, particularly after a fortunate discovery on a photo shoot—a book on westward migration in a school library. 

Later, by then with a family of his own, his photography business drew to a close, and Ellison’s interest in Harold’s Club prompted him to spend the next several years researching, filming and producing a full-length documentary on the long-shuttered but fondly remembered casino.  

In 2023, as he neared retirement from a brief stint in liquor sales—a job prompted by his love for craft beer, as shown in each video—he decided to combine his interest in history and experience in video into the creation of The Reno You Know. 

If you peruse his catalog of videos, you’ll find something for all interests—long-gone music venues; old schoolhouses and casinos; the 1960 Winter Olympics. His most-viewed video isn’t even about Reno proper; it’s an early episode dedicated to the pioneers and their harrowing journey crossing the 40 Mile Desert.  

Through and through, Steve’s fascination with digging into the past—old buildings, famous people, and historic places where things happened that helped form our state and our nation—is what emerges from each video, rather than a dry, academic history lesson. He isn’t afraid to say “I don’t know” or propose a possible explanation for something to which he didn’t find an answer, and his neutral, apolitical presentation is a nice palate-cleanser in these most polarizing times. 

Of course, there’s a fanatical chunk of the internet devoted to all things abandoned, behind the scenes, and otherwise off-limits, but The Reno You Know isn’t sensational clickbait. Steve is a storyteller, showing us what happened here and what came before, and telling the tales behind artifacts of the past. I often find myself captivated by his skillful blending of historic photos and modern footage, smiling at my own memories of growing up here, or saddened by the things we have lost. 

Ellison maintains a growing notebook of ideas for future videos, gleaned from comments on YouTube and Facebook, emails from fans and, most of all, whatever he finds himself interested in. Once he picks a topic, the research begins. He often reads through historic newspaper articles on the public library website, visits the Nevada Historical Society library, and sometimes just reaches out to experts and old-timers to ask questions. He writes a script for his own dialogue in each episode and gets to work, often with his drone or selfie stick, sometimes recruiting a friend or family member to help shoot footage. Finally, he compiles all the video and edits it into the finished product. 

Fortunately, he is finding an audience—most episodes get several thousand views, occasionally far more due to the whims of the YouTube audience. One video (about the River Inn, aka Lawton’s Hot Springs) was viewed 98,000 times in one day! While it might seem obvious that his viewership skews older, his data shows that his viewers span all ages and are located around the world. He has built a big-enough audience locally that he is regularly recognized when out and about, like a small-time celebrity.  

Ellison’s goals for the channel are modest. He’d like to get to 100,000 subscribers (he has about 28,500 as of this writing) to get a nice plaque from YouTube to hang on his wall. But mostly, he’d like the channel to grow so he can make it better: The more viewers he gets, the better known it becomes, hopefully leading to more access to interesting places.  

I want to see The Reno You Know grow for the same reason, selfishly: I want him to make more interesting videos for me to watch, and learn more about this place we call home. 

Watch The Reno You Know at www.youtube.com/@SteveTRYK.