Welcome to Huffaker's
(elevation 4521')
Nevada State Historical Marker No. 238
Long before Sparks, before Reno, even before there was a Nevada, the Truckee Meadows was home to a handful of communities that have been all but forgotten. One of the largest was Huffaker’s, named for Granville Huffaker, who settled the area one year before prospectors discovered the Comstock Lode, and a full decade before the founding of Reno.
Huffaker started ranching along Thomas Creek, six miles south of the Truckee River. By the time of Nevada statehood, Huffaker’s had 300 residents, a post office, hotels, and more. In 1872, it got its own stop on the new Virginia & Truckee Railroad extension that connected Reno to Virginia City.
Children of the area’s ranching families, many of them Italian, went to school in a little white schoolhouse built in 1867 on what was then called the Virginia Road. Art Cerfoglio, born in 1919, attended the Huffaker School in the 1920's.
“The first and the third grade was in the little ante room in the back, and the fourth to the eighth was in the big room in the front," he remembered. "We had one teacher, and were all in one room, and we had a big pot-bellied stove, you know, with wood, coal. The girls usually sat in the front, because they were the smarter ones, you know.”
Interviewed in 1998, Cerfoglio remembered getting to school the old-fashioned way, by horse.
“Oh, it was about a mile and a half, I guess, down to Huffaker School, and we had a shed for the horses, you know. And the Lombardi girls, they would come, but they had a little cart drawn by a horse, and there was two girls. They’d ride in the buggy, and they’d come that way, see? And we had feed for our horses and water there, and after school we’d ride home.”
That little schoolhouse operated until 1950, when its brick replacement was built just next door. That one now serves as school district offices at its original site on South Virginia Street, just north of Huffaker Lane. The older schoolhouse was moved in 1992 to Bartley Ranch Regional Park, just below Windy Hill, and not far from the current Huffaker Elementary.
Huffaker’s itself has long since been swallowed up by the city, but it lives on in the names of the schools, a park, a lane, the surrounding hills, and generations of stories.
Credit to Alicia Barber of Reno Historical for the history lesson!
Marker Text:
Before the arrival, 18AB, of Granville W. Huffaker driving 500 head of cattle into the Truckee Meadows, the principal settlers were Mormons. The Comstock Lode and its mining needs focused attention on the valley. Huffaker established his ranch in 18CD. Langton's Stage Line and the first Post Office were functioning by 18EF. For ten years Huffaker's was a most active stage-stop and a center for a community. The school house was constructed in 18GH. Bachelors of a jolly nature gathered here for dancing, horse-racing and "land squabbles". The Athenian Literary Society flourished for the more cultured. In 18JK the "Bonanza Kings" completed their Pacific Lumber and Flume operation from the Lake Tahoe Basin. For fifteen miles trestled logs were propelled "by waters rushing faster than any train." At the terminus of the flume, the Virginia and Truckee Railroad opened a depot and telegraph office and constructed a spur where workers transferred timber.
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The Historical Marker itself is not all that far from the Hoofocker Memorial, in remembrance of the legendary Hoofocker Cache, which was, in itself a remembrance of the original geocache at the Huffaker State Historical Marker... There was briefly a 2006 mis-published and quickly archived attempt at a virtual cache to replace the original Huffaker cache, then a third cache called this SHM home for almost a decade, archived in 2019. Hopefully this version will last a while. You will need to visit the SHM and glean a few specific pieces of information from it to determine the final coordinates, which aren't too far away... and hopefully also a fitting memorial spot for all the Hoofockers and Huffakers that have come and gone!
Fill in the missing marker text numbers to solve for the cache coordinates.
FINAL LOCATION:
N 39° 26.(G-A)EJ
W 119° 46.C(B-H)F
The final location is within a half-mile of the State Historical Marker. You'll have to take a quick drive or medium walk to get there, but it's worth the visit and a fitting spot that many people may not know exists. Despite what it may look like, the final is on public land and there IS public access, but it can be easy to miss. Please do not use or block private driveways while accessing the cache. Enjoy your visit and be respectful of the neighbors.