Gardnerville, Nevada – Description & History, from The Complete Nevada Traveler by David W. Toll
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Gardnerville Travel
Info
Book
a Room in
Gardnerville
Established
in 1879 to serve the farmers of the Carson Valley, Gardnerville
has long been famous for the Basque restaurants at the south
end of town.
The Nevada
Travel Network
Description and History of
Gardnerville
by David W. Toll
Gardnerville
From The Complete Nevada Traveler, the Affectionate and Intimately Detailed Guidebook to the Most Interesting State in America. Buy the Book Here
The
Carson Valley is one of the earliest-settled, richest,
and most productive of the state¹s agricultural regions. In
spring, summer, and autumn, when the valley is bursting with life,
the
vast irrigated tracts are a green velvet patchwork quilt upon which
the stacks of baled hay stand like giant cheese, and cottonwoods
and poplars rise up like flashing green flames. The meadows are
sopped with water from the Sierra, fat and languid cattle browse
placidly everywhere.
Far from being twins, these sibling towns at the center of the
Carson Valley
have different fathers.
Gardnerville is a farm town established in the 1860s to serve the agricultural
population in a more conveniently central location than longer-established Genoa
at the foot of the Sierra. Minden is the railroad’s child, born in 1905 as a
planned and platted subdivision with a brick depot, a central park and a grid
of quiet streets.
The pioneer town of Gardnerville had its share of rough characters in its youth,
but the farmfolk were generally less frivolous and more peaceful than their mining
town counterparts. So genteel were the residents of Sheridan, a nearby hamlet,
in the years around the turn of the century, that when a U.S. Senator came to
campaign for reelection, the townspeople nailed the town drunk inside a piano
crate for the afternoon to ensure tranquility. The old farm town of the 19th
century has been elongated by the presence of US 395 now, and most of the business
enterprises face the highway.
Two near neighbors along the east side of Main Street epitomize
the changes that have transformed Minden and Gardnerville over
the past generation. Bently Nevada supplies the world market
with vibration monitoring equipment from its headquarters in
the old Minden Creamery. In 1964, Bently was the first high-profile,
high-tech company to relocate from California to Nevada. A slow
migration of high-tech companies continues, as at the same time
Tahoe casino workers, unable to afford life at the Lake, have
migrated down the Kingsbury Grade to buy houses in the Gardnerville
Ranchos. These new populations of well-paid, highly educated
people have remade the character of the Carson Valley. This transformation
is typified by the Carson Valley Inn a short distance away, a
modern new hotel, with highly manicured grounds, casino, meeting
rooms and gourmet restaurant.
Only a few years ago the frowsier, more picturesque Basque restaurants (clustered
near the south end of town) provided Gardnerville with such fame as it enjoys
beyond the confines of the valley. These Basque family-style eating places
were originally established to serve the large population of sheepherders from
the Pyrenees who wandered with the bands of sheep. In Gardnerville, as in many
of northern Nevada’s towns, Basques established boarding-house hotels where
the sheepherders could stay between jobs or for a two-week vacation. For the
non-English-speaking sheepherders the hotels were a special convenience, as
well as being inexpensive and hearty feeders.
In time, other townfolk came to appreciate the modestly priced suppers served
at these workingmen’s hotels, and today dining out at one of them is considered
a substantial treat. Most of them are still small family operations, with mom
and dad supervising a work force of sons, daughters, aunts, and nephews. They
still reserve the first serving for the Basque boarders who have rooms upstairs.
All of them have bars, and except in the peak summer months, the clientele
is largely local.
The J-T and the Overland have deserved reputations for excellent food. Skip
the Rob Roys and the Coors Lites and have a Picon Punch. It’s an Old World
cocktail which leaves the mind clear as the knees turn to jelly and the feet
turn to lead.
The venerable Sharkey’s has been sold, and the venerable Sharkey himself has
passed on, his wonderful memorabilia collections auctioned away. Boxing, rodeo,
Indians and the circus — all gone though the new owners vow they’re maintaining
the prime rib tradition. The Adaven Hotel across the street has been refurbished
as the comfortable Historian Inn with suites and large rooms. Lampe Park, south
of town, has tennis courts, ball fields and playgrounds. The golf course at
the Carson Valley Country Club two miles south was seriously damaged by the
floods of ’97, as was the popular Basque restaurant there. Both are now restored
to health.
Minden adjoins Gardnerville to the north. These
once-separate communities have fused together the way Reno
and Sparks have,
and to visitors the demarcation line is of little importance.
Nevertheless, Minden is quite distinctive, a tidy turn-of-the-century
picture postcard. It was established when the V&T’s profitable
Tonopah and Goldfield traffic was snatched away by the more direct
S.P. spur through Hazen. The V&T then extended a line south
to harvest the Carson Valley trade.
By this time, however, the only feasible right of way had long been the property
of the Dangberg family. The Dangbergs were quite agreeable to the railroad
laying tracks across their ground — if the railroad would build its depot
on Dangberg land at the north edge of Gardnerville.
This the railroad did, and when the small brick depot was built a two-block
business street had been staked and named Esmeralda, with a large park separating
it from the neat grid of residential streets.
This tiny enclave of Americana retains much of its original appeal. Downtown
workers who eat their lunches in the park sometimes get up noontime softball
games that anyone can join in. Except for mild excitements like this, Minden
is magnificently quiet; on a spring day you can hear the buzzing of the bees
in the gardens and the shouts of children in the schoolyard three blocks over.
Minden is at the intersection of three of the most scenic highways in the west
and is the closest Nevada community to a fourth. Thus there are restaurants,
motels and all services for travelers.
Nevada 88 takes off from the north end of Minden for the California state line,
where it becomes California 88 and climbs into the high summits of the Sierra.
It squeezes through Carson Pass and drops down the other side into the Mother
Lode foothills. Nevada 207 is the Kingsbury Grade, which climbs the sheer eastern
face of the Sierra Nevada to drop into the Tahoe Basin at Stateline. This is
the route of the Pony Express and of the Overland Stage (“Keep your seat,
Horace, I’ll get you there on time!”) although much smoothed, leveled
and straightened from the narrow original. You’ll get the airliner’s view of
the great valley as you soar upward above the cloud level, really quite thrilling.
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