Peleg Brown Ranch/Louis Damonte Ranch Traditional Geocache
Peleg Brown Ranch/Louis Damonte Ranch
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Peleg Brown Ranch/Louis Damonte Ranch
This cache is the first of numerous caches dedicated to the lesser known history of the City of Reno. In this series, you will learn about historically or architecturally significant structures in the Reno area, and the stories behind them. The majority of these locations are situated amongst us, often overlooked while go about our daily lives. So take a moment out of your busy life with your bills, computers, jobs, gadgets and obligations and think about what life might have been like when these buildings were built.
Peleg Brown (1836-1878), first settled in Nevada north of the "Brown Ranch" in 1857. Peleg purchased the "Brown Ranch" in 1858 (for $6.56 and 12 heifers) and constructed the present buildings between 1860 and 1890 with the main house being built in 1864 (the same year Nevada entered the Union as a state) for about $4000. In addition, a barn was built in 1865 for about $860. This early ranch consisted of 620 acres, of which approximately 20 acres became rights-of-way for the Virginia & Truckee Railroad and U.S. Highway 395.
The ranch was located in a prime location making it an ideal spot to provide milk, butter, meat, vegetables and fruit to hungry miners in the Comstock. In addition, the second floor of the home was converted to a boarding house providing fourteen rooms for travelers in the area.
Peleg Brown and Ervin Crane, his neighbor to the south, are credited with introducing alfalfa to the area. The ranch was operated by Peleg Brown until his death in 1878. His
wife, Elizabeth Gill Brown (1835-1918), ran the ranch until her death in 1918. The ranch stayed in the family until it was sold to Louis Damonte in 1940 by the estate of Peleg and Elizabeth Brown's daughter, Laura Wilcox.
In 1877, Peleg donated one acre of land to the county for construction of a school. The original Brown School, a wood-frame structure, was built in 1878 and served the area until a modern brick structure replaced it.
The core of the Brown/Damonte Ranch today is a collection of five nineteenth and twentieth-century buildings. The main house, which you can see directly to the west of the cache location is a large, two-and-one–half story, Greek Revival style residence adorned by a typical side-facing gable roof. Previous occupants remodeled the house in
1940 and 1955. The Ranch is still owned by descendants of the Brown family, but only 8 acres of the ranch remain.
In addition to being a successful rancher, Peleg Brown was also a stockholder, as well as one of the organizers of the Steamboat Canal Company. The Steamboat Canal Company owned the Truckee and Steamboat Irrigation Canal, a irrigation canal that still runs from Verdi, NV through Southwest Reno 34 miles to the Steamboat Springs area.
DO NOT DISTURB OCCUPANTS OF THE HOUSE!!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Vg'f evtug jurer lbh guvax vg vf...