1950 Steamboat Pkwy, Reno, NV 89521

Damonte Ranch Park

Park Description:

Damonte Ranch Park is an 8-acre Reno park with year-round restrooms.

Park Amenities:

Playground, basketball court, walking paths, picnic shelter, barbeque area, and tables/benches.

Park Contact Information:

City of Reno - Parks & Facilities (775) 334-2417

Park Highlights

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Park History

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History of Migrants in the Damonte Area

By the mid-1840’s, migrants began to arrive. The first non-natives to travel through the Truckee Meadows were the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy wagon party in 1844. A local Paiute, Chief Truckee, is credited with guiding these emigrants into the Sierra Nevada mountains to Truckee and Donner Lake; hence the origin of the name Truckee throughout the region. Next came John C. Fremont in 1845 and the Donner party in the fall/winter of 1846/1847. Many more migrants traveled through the area after gold was discovered in California.

While Mormons were the first few European settlers of the Truckee Meadows area in the mid-1850s, the first non-Mormon European settlers were brothers Peleg and Joshua Brown in January 1857. The brothers settled in what is now the Damonte Ranch area while it was still part of the Utah Territory. There were only a few other immigrants in the area at that point in time. The Brown ranches included cattle, oxen, bulls, horses, and gardens with many vegetables and fruits.

Image:
Photo of John C. Fremont.

Mining Changes Things in Damonte

Things changed in 1859 with the discovery of silver in close-by Virginia City. Many men came to mine the silver, along with merchants and bankers to supply the miners. Peleg Brown provided food and lodging to the miners; he replaced the sagebrush land with crops of alfalfa to feed the livestock used in mining.

Peleg donated $2,400 for the digging of an irrigation canal from the Truckee River in Verdi to Steamboat Creek near his home the valley. There were only 543 residents in what is now Washoe County in 1860, but that expanded to 1,613 in 1861 when Nevada became a territory.

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Damonte Ranch Park on iNaturalist

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Want To Learn More?

References & Further Info:

City of Reno Parks & Facilities Directory - Damonte Ranch Park
A Steamboat in the Desert. (2010). Retrieved from Healthy Beginnings Magazine: https://www.hbmag.com/a-steamboat-in-the-desert/
Brown, H. (1968). A County Called Washoe.
Davis, S. P. (1913). History of Nevada, volume 2.
Hummel, N. (1888). General History and Resources of Washoe County, Nevada.
Moreno, R. (2015). A Short History of Reno, 2nd edition.
New Southeast Reno. (2008). Reno Gazette Journal .
Protect Mustangs. (2012). Retrieved from Historic Virginia City wild horses going to auction: http://protectmustangs.org/?p=2765
Roccapriore, C. (2007, September 17). Construction under way at site of Damonte neighborhood park. Reno Gazette Journal .
Spillman, B. (2018, January 30). Nevada could give away nearly 3,000 free-range horses in May. Reno Gazette Journal .
Steamboat Springs - Historical Marker #198. (2018). Nevada Historical Markers .
Steamboat Springs. (2018). Retrieved from Nevada State Preservation Office: http://shpo.nv.gov/nevadas-historical-markers/historical-markers/steamboat-springs
Voyage of the Continents: North America (2013). [Motion Picture].
Walton-Buchanan, H. (2015, Winter). The Peleg Brown / Louis Damonte Ranch. FootPrints by Historic Reno Preservation Society .

Contributor(s):

Jill Richardson (history)

Haley McGuire

Alex Shahbazi

Last Updated:

August 26, 2022 at 6:31:55 PM

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