|
|
Take a visualtour of
Beautiful
Douglas County
  
Gardnerville -
Carson
Valley
Early Gardnerville served the farming community and teamsters hauling local produce to booming Bodie (Ca.). The first buildings were a blacksmith shop, a saloon and the Gardnerville Hotel. The latter was moved by Lawrence Gilman in 1879 from the emigrant trail between
Genoa
and Walley’s
Hot Springs
, where it was known as Ken House, to its new site, the homestead of John. M. Gardner.
Just as
Genoa
was the center for British Settlers (mostly Mormon) after 1851, so Gardnerville, after 1879, became the center for the 1870 Danish immigrants. They founded the Valhalla Society in 1885 and met at Valhalla Hall—now gone.
Starting in 1898, Spanish and French Basque shepherds tended some 13,000 sheep in
Carson
Valley
, increasing to 25,000 by 1925, when the Basques began acquiring their own sheep and land. After 1918, several Basques in Gardnerville opened inns which flourished during the Prohibition years.
Carson
Valley
The birthplace of
Nevada
- Carson River Basin In 1850, a first settlement was made at Mormon Station, renamed
Genoa
1856. Here, in 1851, the first attempt to form a government was made. In 1861,
Nevada
’s Territorial Government was established at
Genoa
.
Over the old road skirting the west bank of the
Carson River
thousands of immigrants moved southward to cross the Sierra, feeding their livestock on grass cut along the river. At
Genoa
, at Mottsville, settled in 1852; and at
Sheridan
, settled by Moses Job about 1854, they stopped to enjoy produce of the state’s first gardens. Pony Express riders used this route in 1860, switching in 1861 to the shorter Dagget Trail, now known as the Kingsbury Grade.
|
|
|
