Ormsby County, Nevada was a county of Nevada from 1861 until 1969. It contained Carson City, the county seat, and later, the state capital, founded two years earlier. It was named after Major William M. Ormsby, one of the original settlers of Carson City, killed along with seventy-five other white men in 1860, in an unsuccessful attempt to subdue a perceived uprising of Paiute Indians near Pyramid Lake, Nevada, which was at the time part of Utah Territory.