Fun Facts

  • Carson Valley’s Douglas High School band has performed at two presidential inaugurations, those of George H.W. Bush in 2001 and George W. Bush in 2005.
  • The Carson Valley is in Douglas County, the most consistently Republican county in Nevada, ironically named for Democrat Stephen A. Douglas after his death in 1861.
  • Although Reno is famed as the Nevada home of quickie divorces, the town of Minden in Carson Valley gained notoriety with the divorces of movie stars Mary Pickford in 1920 and Ida Lupino in 1951.
  • Famed cowboy humorist Will Rogers was a frequent visitor of Fred Dangberg at Carson Valley’s Dangberg Ranch while filming the movie “Lightnin’” at Lake Tahoe in 1930.
  • The town of Gardnerville is named for John and Mary Gardner, an English-born couple who moved to Carson Valley in 1864, and not for Matthew C. Gardner as is commonly thought.
  • Carson Valley’s Dr. Eliza Cook was the first woman licensed to practice when the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners was created in 1899. An ardent feminist, she was instrumental in Nevada granting women the right to vote in 1914, six years before the 19th Amendment gave women that right nationally.
  • The first edition of the Territorial Enterprise newspaper was printed in the Carson Valley town of Genoa on December 18, 1858. The press moved to Carson City and then to Virginia City, and boasted its most famous writer, Mark Twain, beginning in 1862.
  • David Walley’s Hot Springs resort, just south of the Carson Valley town of Genoa, was founded in 1862 with only a tent for shelter and mineral baths selling for 50 cents.
  • The first school in Nevada was a private school operated in 1854-55 by Eliza Mott and a Mrs. Allen in the home of Israel Mott in Mottsville. The first Mottsville public schoolhouse was constructed in 1865 at a cost of $888.71 for “sites, buildings, repairs, and school furniture.”
  • Carson Valley’s town of Mormon Station was renamed Genoa in 1855 for the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, who discovered America.
    Carson Valley’s town of Minden is named after Minden, Germany which is near the birthplace of H.F. Dangberg.
  • In the 1930s, the Minden Inn was frequented by Hollywood movie stars, including Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.
  • The town of Minden in the Carson Valley was created in 1906 as the southern terminus of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad.
  • The Genoa Candy Dance originated in 1919 as a fundraiser to purchase street lights. It has since evolved into the largest arts and crafts faire in northern Nevada, with over 300 craft and food vendors and thousands of attendees each year.
  • On June 28, 1910 an attempt by a resident of the poor house to kill bedbugs with a pan of burning sulfur started a fire that burned down much of downtown Genoa.
  • Genoa, considered the oldest permanent settlement in Nevada, is also thought to be one of the most haunted.
  • With thermals produced by the proximity of the Sierra Nevada, Carson Valley is considered one of the finest locations in the world for soaring, or unpowered flight in fixed wing aircraft.
  • The Ferris Wheel, invented by Carson Valley native G. W. Ferris and unveiled at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, was inspired by a water wheel at Cradlebaugh that triggered the imagination of the young man.
  • The fabled Pony Express traveled through Carson Valley, with a station at Genoa and a route over old Kingsbury Grade to Fridays Station at Lake Tahoe.
  • John ‘Snowshoe’ Thompson carried the mail and supplies on skis for twenty winters between Genoa and Placerville, taking two days to travel West and three days to return over the Sierra.
  • Carson Valley was once part of the Territory of Utah.
  • Hollywood star Clark Gable married Kay Spreckels, his fifth wife, in Minden on July 11, 1955. Justice of the Peace G.W. “Walt” Fisher performed the ceremony.