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Ancient Greek philosophers pondered
the essence of the world and debated whether the "first
principle" or "arche" of nature was air, earth, fire
or water. At Donna's Ranch our customers have it
figured out: they arrive by earth or by air, drink
the firewater and prove that what makes the world
go around is "libido" or "sexual drive".
Actually, the Greek philosopher
Thales (634 - 546 BC) got it the closest because
he considered WATER to be the first principle of
nature. And so it goes with many of the locations
in the Old West that the history of an area boils
down to WATER.
Donna's Ranch is located in Northeastern
Nevada in Elko County. Elko County is a very large
county, 17,135 square miles, about the combined size
of Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island or
a little smaller than the combination of New Hampshire
and Vermont.
When the intercontinental railroads
were constructed, they were built along the same
pathways the wagon trains used to make the dusty
trip to the West Coast. This route is now Interstate
80...Denver to Cheyenne to Salt Lake City across
Northern Nevada to Reno, then over the Donner Pass
through the Sierra Nevada mountains, down into Sacramento
and westward to San Francisco. The railroads were
completed when Interstate 80 was still a wagon trail.
Donna's Ranch is located at the
headwaters of the Humboldt River. Here we have a
very high water table. It's only down about 4 or
5 feet from the surface of the ground. When the railroads
came through, they located a watering station here
for their steam locomotives.
The railroad runs by Donna's less
than 100 yards to the South. (We are of course on
the "wrong side of the tracks.")
Also, on land now owned by Donna's
in a flat damp sage brush area west of our parking
lot was located a Chinese man camp. Most people know
that the early railroads were built by hardworking
laborers under almost slave labor conditions. Ninety
percent of the workers on the Union Pacific were
Chinese. They were available as laborers because
they came to mine search for gold, but when they
arrived, the folks who were already there passed
a law that made it illegal for the Chinese to prospect
for or mine gold.
The time was right after the Civil
War, as the Golden Spike was driven when the Central
Pacific and Union Pacific railroads met at Promontory
Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869.
Nevada became a state on Halloween in 1864. The Comstock
Lode was a massive silver deposit discovered in the hills
southeast of Reno in Virginia City in 1859. Nevada was
admitted to the Union primarily because the silver from the
Comstock Lode was needed to finance the Civil War effort for
the North.
So Donna's started along with the railroads, and it has
always had a symbiotic connection with the railroads. Our
building has two sections which were originally railroad
structures converted to use as part of the famous cat house.
From looking at the structure of Donna's buildings, it looks
like the place grew in a fairly disorganized fashion in
about 5 stages. The oldest section of the house is about
three small rooms with very thick adobe-like walls and a low
ceiling. Believe me, they look 100 years old! The rooms are
now used as a beer storage room and a pantry off of the
kitchen. But originally the old rooms were used for "more
than working on the railroad." In a proud and ancient
tradition, you could say that the ladies of the late 19th
century helped build a nation by caring for the golden
spikes that built a railroad and linked a nation together
from sea to shining sea.
From the 1870's until about the 1970's the economy of
Northern Nevada was essentially the same. It was cowboy
country! Large ranches and cattle stretched for miles. There
was some mining and transportation with Highway 40 and the
two railroads (Southern Pacific and Union Pacific.) There
was also tourism and local government. Being a high desert
plateau, the area still has a unique kind of beauty, an
almost endless openness and phenomenally beautiful
skies.
With the discovery of large gold reserves on what is
known as the "Carlin Trend" by Carlin Gold, now a part of
Newmont Mining Company, the economy is now dominated by
mining. The mining companies pay very well, and the area has
prospered. Although there are more people and the overall
character has changed somewhat, it is still a rough and
tumble society with a refreshing "live and let live"
attitude. It's still an area where folks can live life and
enjoy nature without being hassled by some of the more
restrictive norms prevalent in more developed parts of the
country.
Sometime later, Donna's was expanded, adding the area
which is now the kitchen and the bar, the office and a
couple more rooms. This area is of normal frame
construction.
In about 1967 the railroad passenger station was
decommissioned. Two thirds of the building was moved to
Donna's and the other third was moved about 10 miles to an
RV park. The railroad building added what is now a bathroom,
three girl's rooms, a manager's apartment, a photo studio,
storage and a laundry room. Somewhere along the line two
trailers and a garage were added. Various roofs were built
over the combined facilities, and now trying to figure out
where roof leaks might be coming from requires a rocket
scientist.
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