Orville James Olson was born at Wilson, Ellsworth County, Kansas, July 9, 1890. When he was two years of age the family moved to Cripple Creek, Colorado, where twelve years of Orville’s boyhood were spent and where he attended the public schools. His education was finished at Fort Collins, Colorado, in the preparatory school maintained by the Colorado Agricultural College. He was active in athletics, having played on a winning football team three years, and his quiet unassuming manner, fair and liberal dealing made many life-long friends both among the student-body and the mining and milling fraternity, in later years. The lure of mining and milling brought Orville to Nevada at the age of twenty-two years, and this he followed with success in many parts of Nevada and other western states, until the time of his entrance into the United States army. At that time, October 10, 1917, he was a resident of Rockland, Mineral County, Nevada.

He was assigned at once to Battery E, 348th Field Artillery, 91st Division, then in training at Camp Lewis, Washington. With this unit he served four months, during which time the exposures of training brought about a tubercular condition which resulted ultimately in his discharge from the army. He returned then to Nevada and took up his residence with his father in Carson City, but he never recovered from his illness and on the 12th of November, 1919, he passed away quietly away to the great beyond. His remains lie in the G. A. R. Cemetery at Carson City. The near relatives who survive him are his father, Halga Olson, Carson City, Nevada; his mother, Rose E. Olson, Fort Collins, Colorado; and two brothers, C. R. Olson, Broken Hills, Nevada, and H. D. Olson, Fort Collins, Colorado. Orville was a member of the Tonopah B. P. O. E. No. 1062 on whose Honor Roll his name appears. This clear-cut man of unswerving fidelity to all, lives in the sweet memory of his countless friends, his father, mother and relatives.