Discover Exceptional Views from Reno's Huffaker Park Lookout Trail

Perhaps the best and most accessible place to find nice views of the Truckee Meadows is Reno’s Huffaker Hills Regional Park, located in the southern part of the city.

This regional county park contains several miles of hiking trails that wind across some 251 acres located between South McCarran Boulevard and the South Meadows/Double Diamond area.

Developed in 2005, the Huffaker Hills park consists of two loop trails of about 2.5 miles in length that wind up the side of the southwestern-most part of the hills and along a ridge that offers panoramic views of the Truckee Meadows. Additionally, a gazebo (unfortunately vandals have trashed it) can be found near the top of the ridge.

Near the trailhead, the park also offers a nice covered picnic area, playgrounds, an enclosed tennis court and basketball courts.

Obviously, the best aspect of the park is the hiking trail system. Just south of the covered picnic area is the trailhead. You cross a small wooden bridge over a creek and begin the trek up the side of the hills.

This is probably the most challenging part of the hike as you ascend on a fairly steep, dirt pathway via a series of switchbacks. At the top you reach the gazebo and your first (and perhaps most impressive) scenic outlook.

From here, you can look north over the city of Reno and see Peavine Mountain in the distance. At night, the view can be particularly spectacular.

The trail continues from here along the ridgeline with a handful of smaller, spur trails leading to other outlooks, some with metal benches. The terrain is covered with clusters of native grasses and sagebrush, with large moss-covered volcanic rocks peeking through the vegetation.

The path loops around the southwestern edge of the hills and, at this point offers views of the Damonte Ranch area and, to the west, Mount Rose and the Thomas Creek region.

The hills are named for Granville W. Huffaker, one of the first non-Mormon settlers in the Truckee Meadows. In 1858, he and a partner drove an estimated 500 head of cattle into the area from Salt Lake City, Utah and settled onto land near the southwest tip of a string of small hills that would be named for him.

Huffaker had been born in 1831 in Monticello, Kentucky, and in the early 1850s, he drifted west to Utah. In Salt Lake City, he and Louis P. Drexler operated a general store, which they sold in the late 1850s in order to make their fortunes in Nevada.

Within a few years, Huffaker’s Station, as his 600-acre ranch became known, was home to several hotels and saloons as well as livery stables and express yards. By the mid-1860s, nearly 300 people lived around the settlement.

The station benefited from having an excellent location—it was at the crossroads of the main north-south and east-west travel routes (linking Virginia City and California)—and by the early 1860s was the largest community in the Truckee Meadows.

In 1867, a one-room schoolhouse was erected on land donated by Huffaker and served as a popular gathering spot for community dances and meetings. In 1992, the schoolhouse, which had been preserved over the years, was moved to Reno’s Bartley Ranch Park and restored. Today it is open for tours.

For more information about hiking the Lookout Trail, go to www.reno.gov/home/showpublisheddocument?id=24086.

The Legend of Tahoe Tessie Persists

For years, Lake Tahoe souvenir shops have sold t-shirts, bobble-heads, and other items featuring “Tahoe Tessie,” a local version of Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster. In most depictions, Tessie is a big, friendly eel-like creature who frolics in Tahoe’s deep, cold waters.

But is there more to the story?

For a number of years there have been alleged sightings of something in the lake. In the early 1980s, the Reno News and Review newspaper featured a story about a fisherman named Gene St. Denis, who, along with a friend, reported seeing something unusual near Cave Rock.

St. Denis said he and his companion were in a fishing boat when they spotted a ““a blotchy gray creature about 10 feet to 15 feet long” swimming nearby. He said the thing turned sharply in the water, leaving a big V-shaped wake.

Later, St. Denis claimed that several fish he caught that day showed signs of being scored by teeth marks on by something as he tried to reel them in.

“About halfway to the boat, these fish—they were big fish—got raked,” he said.

As for what might have attacked his fish, St. Denis said he thought it might be a giant white sturgeon or an oversized Muskie.

Or maybe it was something else. Over the past decade there have been a handful of reports from people saying they have seen some type of big, serpent-like creature swimming in Lake Tahoe.

For example, the Tahoe Daily Tribune reported in April 2005 that two Sacramento visitors, Beth Douglas and Ron Talmadge, saw a strange, dark undulating object near Tahoe Park Beach. Douglas said she had seen something very big and long, which appeared to have three to five humps on its back.

Talmadge told the paper, “Damn, that’s Tessie . . . I thought, ‘Whoa, this sucker’s real.’”

Perhaps the most bizarre story is one that has appeared on several web sites alleging that the world famous oceanographer, Jacques Cousteau, explored the bottom of the lake in the 1970s using a special submersible vehicle and stumbled on a horrible sight.

According to this tale, Cousteau found something so grotesque that he refused to ever show the film footage he shot that day or to ever speak of it again. Cousteau supposedly said the world wasn’t ready for what he had found down there.

Despite Cousteau’s vow of silence, these Internet sites claim that the explorer had found something even more unbelievable than a giant eel monster. It’s said he encountered remarkably preserved, virtually untouched human bodies at the bottom of Lake Tahoe, including drowned 19^th century Chinese woodcutters and victims of various gangland executions.

Unfortunately for those who spread the story, it isn’t supported by any facts. Former Nevada State Archivist Guy Louis Rocha, who is adept at puncturing Nevada myths, has written that the story is false because Cousteau, who died in 1997, never visited Lake Tahoe.

Further, Rocha wrote, experts, such as Dr. Graham Kent of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, say there’s no possible way the bodies could be intact because they would have been eaten by fish and digested by bacteria.

In other words, it’s complete nonsense.

As for the existence of Tessie, retired University of California at Davis professor, Dr. Charles Goldman, studied Lake Tahoe for more than 40 years and has long dismissed the legends.

“You can’t prove that something’s not there,” he told the Reno News & Review in 2004. “We think that a lot of the Tessie reports are actually colliding boat wakes which produce a series of waves.

“Tessie’s like Santa Claus. It’s a fun story,” he said.

A longer version of the legends about what lives at the bottom of Lake Tahoe can be found in the newest version of my book, “Myths and Legends of Nevada,” published in 2019 by Globe Pequot Press.

Spring Mountain Area Offers Scenic Splendor Only Minutes from Las Vegas

 

Spring Mountain Ranch State Park just doesn’t seem like it’s located in southern Nevada.

In fact, it’s a virtual oasis—and has been considered so for more than a century—that boasts a spring-fed stream, fields of lush, green meadows, and tall shade trees.

Located 15 miles west of downtown Las Vegas via West Charleston Boulevard, the park sits at the base of the colorfully banded Wilson Cliffs, part of the Red Rock Canyon Area.

In addition to being one of the most scenic places in the Las Vegas area, the ranch predates the founding of the state of Nevada. In the mid-1830s, a campsite was established alongside the creek that winds down from the nearby mountains.

The presence of potable water and grass made the location attractive to travelers journeying on the Old Spanish Trail, which passed through southern Nevada. Historians also note that the spot was a popular hideout for outlaws who preyed on pack trains.

In 1864, the area was claimed by an outlaw named Bill Williams, who maintained horses at the site. In the mid-1870s, James Wilson and his partner, George Anderson, filed for legal ownership of the site, which they named Sand Stone Ranch.

Anderson departed in the early 1880s and Wilson assumed control of the property as well as adopted and raised Anderson's two sons. The two, Jim Wilson Jr. and Tweed, inherited the ranch after their stepfather died in 1906.

The two operated the ranch for many years before selling it in 1929 to Willard George, a family friend, who allowed them to live on the ranch until they died. They are buried, with their adopted father, in a small cemetery on the property.

George began to develop the ranch, adding a chinchilla farm (he was a Hollywood furrier by trade) as well as cattle. In 1944, George leased the ranch to actor Chester Lauck (he played "Lum" on the popular "Lum and Abner" radio show), the first of the ranch's celebrity owners.

Lauck purchased the property outright in 1948 and constructed an impressive New England-style cut sandstone and redwood ranch house, which remains standing and is open for tours.

Called the "Bar Nothing Ranch," Lauck used the ranch as a vacation retreat and summer camp for boys, while raising cattle on the land.

In 1955, Lauck sold the ranch estate to Vera Krupp, wife of the German munitions manufacturer, Alfried Krupp. Mrs. Krupp added a swimming pool and expanded the house and the cattle operations.

Mrs. Krupp, who made the ranch her principal residence, renamed it Spring Mountain Ranch. The ranch, with its manicured meadows and cool shade from the southern Nevada heat, was a popular retreat for Mrs. Krupp’s celebrity friends.

The ranch was sold in 1967 to the Hughes Tool Company, which was part of the Howard Hughes empire. While Hughes never lived at the ranch, it served as a kind of retreat for executives in his Summa Corporation.

In 1972, the site was purchased by Fletcher Jones and William Murphy, two southern Nevada businessmen who announced plans to construct a large housing development. Public outcry resulted in the ranch being sold in 1974 to the Nevada Division of State Parks.

The ranch remains one of the most beautiful spots in southern Nevada. The drive on the main road takes you through a small forest of Joshua trees and yuccas before the park seemingly erupts around you like a lush, green mirage.

The main house is open for self-guided tours when the park is open. Park hours vary by season so check out the website, parks.nv.gov/parks/spring-mountain-ranch, for updated information.

Additionally, guided tours of the 520 acres are offered by appointment and include visits to the Old Reservoir, the Wilson family cemetery, the 1880's board and batten cabin, an 1864 stone cabin and blacksmith shop and other ranch buildings.

The park also offers Living History Programs with guides, in costume, demonstration ranch life and re-enacting historic events. The park is also a popular location for outdoor concerts in the spring and summer months.

Poeville is Nowheresville

 

It’s been said that Poeville, one of the few mining camps to ever crop up in Washoe County, was named after a man who was a cousin of writer Edgar Allan Poe.

While that’s probably appropriate for a place that is now a complete ghost, Poeville’s story isn’t particularly macabre and is far more typical of Nevada’s often short-lived mining camps.

Records indicate that in the 1860s and ‘70s, prospectors poked around Peavine Mountain, the big mound that stand northwest of the Truckee Meadows. Several small mining camps popped up on the mountain’s flanks including one called Wingfield (which was located near where the Desert Research Institute and Truckee Meadows Community College are now located), and Poeville, which was originally known as Peavine and later as Podunk (or Poedunk), and Poe City.

Poeville, named for its founder, John Poe, was located on the backside of Peavine Mountain, just above Stead. Poe discovered gold and copper veins in the area in 1862, and within two years a small settlement of about 200 people had blossomed.

By 1874, the community had sufficient activity to be provided with a post office, which operated there for about four years. Local historian John Evanoff has also written that Poeville had a few saloons, a small hotel, livery stables, a large dry goods store, a Chinese laundry, a stamp-mill and a wagon repair shop.

Initially, the ore extracted near Poeville proved difficult to process because of scarce water supplies but the town got a boost in 1866, when a freight system started to transport the ore to Cisco, California for processing (later made even easier with the completion of the transcontinental railroad through Reno).

While Poe had originally thought the site was rich with gold, once mining was underway it became clear the veins contained more copper than the other precious metal. The lower price for copper, coupled with more lucrative opportunities in other mining camps, caused residents to begin to drift away.

Nevada historian Stanley Paher notes that Poeville’s copper was of sufficient quality that specimens were exhibited in 1864 at the Nevada State Fair, held in Carson City that year.

Mining ceased in the late 1870s and by 1880, only 15 residents still lived in Poeville.

Today, nothing remains of the mining camp. The drive or hike to the site, however, is popular with four-wheelers, mountain-bikers and hikers.

A six-mile roundtrip trail known, appropriately, as Poeville Trail, can best be accessed from Peavine Road, a dirt route that goes to the top of Peavine Mountain. You can find Peavine Road off North Virginia Street, about a quarter-mile west of Stead Boulevard. A good source of information is the All Trails website (https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/nevada/poeville-trail).

 

The Sad Saga of Reno's Lawton Springs

 

Should you have headed west of Reno on Fourth Street in the 1940s or 50s, you would come to an impressive complex of red-roofed buildings that included more than a dozen motel rooms, a large building housing an indoor pool, a restaurant and dance hall, and an inviting outdoor pool.

Known as Lawton Hot Springs, the resort, built on a bend in the Truckee River, traced its commercial beginnings to Reno’s early years as a railroad town. Originally known as Granite Hot Springs because the warm water poured from a large crevice in a granite cliff, it was used by the railroad as a watering spot.

Later, it became a popular spot for railroad workers to soak away their pains (in holes dug in the ground near the springs).

In 1884, a man named Sumner Lee Laughton purchased the site, including the spring, and built a station house, with a pool, to serve railroad travelers (the line ran nearby) and anyone else seeking a warm dip.

According to a history written by the great-grandson of a later owner, the resort was originally supposed to be called “Laughton’s Hot Springs,” but the name kept getting misspelled as “Lawton’s,” so Laughton went with the flow and changed the name.

During the 1920s, as automobile travel became more common, Lawton’s became an important rest stop for car travelers on the Lincoln and Victory Highways. Lawton expanded his roadside station to include a motor inn and large swimming pool. By the 1930s, Lawton’s had become a popular resort with a bar, dining, and gambling that served the rush of visitors heading to Reno to obtain a divorce.

In 1931, heavyweight boxer Max Baer trained at Lawton’s for a July 4 fight in Reno against Paulino Uzcudun, known as “The Basque Woodchopper.” The two battled for 20 rounds before Uzcudun was declared the winner. Baer would go on to win the world heavyweight championship in 1934.

As the divorce trade began to decline, Lawton’s went through a succession of owners and experienced a decline of its own.

In the 1970s, Interstate 80 was built, which diverted nearly all road traffic from in front of the resort, which by this time had been renamed the River Inn. In 1979, a development company acquired the site, demolished any of the remaining buildings, and, in 1983, constructed a massive wooden structure that was to house what the company described as a “world class” casino, resort and spa.

Despite the structure’s impressive appearance, the owners didn’t have the financing to complete the project and for the next 38 years it stood vacant and unfinished, subject to vandalism and other indignities.

In February of this year, however, a man named Lawrence McNutt purchased the site for a reported $852,000 and announced plans to turn it into his home. Speaking to Reno’s News4 TV station, he admitted the crumbling property had “a lot of rat stuff and bats,” but he was optimistic he could make it work.

A former stuntman who has had success in the information technology business in California, McNutt called it a “beautiful building” and said he and his girlfriend had fallen in love with the structure and the history of the place.

From the looks of photos that can be found online, he’ll also need a bit of luck.

The Story of Reno's Gone But Not-Quite-Forgotten Moana Hot Springs

 

 

Newcomers to Reno traveling on Moana Lane often wonder why there’s a street in the Biggest Little City named after the titular Hawaiian character from a recent Disney cartoon?

It turns out the street actually derived its name from a well-known hot springs complex that once stood on a lot at the corner of West Moana and Baker lanes and that resort was named after a famous Hawaiian resort-spa.

A metal Nevada-shaped historic marker on the former site of the hot springs provides some illumination. It notes that Reno’s Moana Hot Springs opened on October 29, 1905 and boasted a large bath house with a pool fed by natural hot springs at the site as well as a hotel, clubhouse, baseball diamonds and lush picnic grounds.

The original owners, Charles T. Short, John N. Evans and Al North, had acquired a portion of the Haines Ranch in southwest Reno that sat on top of a geothermal belt running through that part of the Truckee Meadows. They promoted the warm waters in the pool as having healing, medicinal qualities.

After opening, Moana Hot Springs quickly became a popular local attraction. Within a short time, the owners added a dance hall, a lake for winter ice skating and summer boating, and an outdoor pavilion.

In 1910, when Reno hosted the so-called “Fight of the Century,” between world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson and his challenger, former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries, the latter chose the hot springs as his training site and hosted a series of boxing exhibitions with sparring partners in the lead-up to the main event.

Records show the site also hosted aerial exhibitions during the heyday of barnstorming airplane pilots and exotic animal shows. The name became so well known that the owners sold bottled water and ginger ale made from its waters at off-site outlets.

In 1907, the Nevada Interurban Street Railway, the city of Reno’s electric trolley system, extended a three-mile line to the resort, linking it to the rest of the city.

As an aside, my late grandmother once told me that when she was a young girl she remembered it being a special treat to travel from her home in downtown Reno on the trolley out to Moana Hot Springs, which, she said, was so far out of town.

World War I, and the relative softening of Reno’s tourism trade during the war, caused the resort to lose business and, in about 1917, the owners sold it to Louis Berrum, owner of the trolley line.

Berrum’s company ran trolley service out to the resort until 1920, when it closed down all of its operations. The Berrum family, however, continued to operate the resort for the next four decades.

In 1927, fire destroyed the original pool house but it was rebuilt. Over the next decades, the hot springs gradually declined in popularity. In 1957, the city of Reno acquired the property, demolished all of the old buildings and, in 1960, built a functional covered pool and wooden baseball stadium on the site (which was home of the Reno Silver Sox and Reno Padres minor league teams for many years).

The Moana Pool provided recreational swimming for residents until 2007, when the city closed the facility, which was badly in need of rehabilitation. In 2012, it was demolished.

Today, municipal sports fields and a gravel lot stand on the site of the once-splendid resort. For several years, city officials have had plans to build a large, modern aquatics complex on the property once funding becomes available.

Valmy: Small in Stature But Big in Stories

 

At first glance, the tiny enclave of Valmy, located about 35 miles east of Winnemucca, doesn’t appear to consist of much more than a large service station with an RV park. But there’s far more to its story.

A railroad stop was established here in the 1890s to provide water and fuel for passing trains. Due to the presence of springs in the area, it had long been the site of many battles between rival Shoshone tribal units sparring over the water. In fact, because of those skirmishes, it was named after a famous French battle site.

Records indicate that a post office opened at another nearby railroad stop called Stone House in 1890 but was relocated to Valmy in 1915. Sometime in the early 20^th century, a small gas station, store, bus stop, and post office opened on the site.

In 1932, an entrepreneurial 19-year-old named Eugene DiGrazia purchased what he described in a 1987 article in the Los Angeles Times as “the whole works” from a school teacher for $1,800. He later purchased 140 surrounding the complex for $2,100.

DiGrazia told Charles Hillinger of the Times that when he purchased the property it “had only one pump and in the beginning cars and trucks were few and far between. A narrow two-lane road went through here.

“Gas sold for 25 cents a gallon. I paid 19 1/2 cents for it . . . bread sold for 10 cents a loaf, milk 10 cents a gallon,” he continued. He said his most regular customers were miners working nearby diggings who rode into the settlement on burros.

“President Herbert Hoover stopped here in 1940. He was interested in a gold mine near here,” DiGrazia told Hiliinger. “He bought gas, bought some candy and used the out-house. He stood around and talked for a while.” 

For the next 58 years, DiGrazia and his wife, Julia, operated what was known as the “Valmy Auto Court.” Over the years, the property expanded to include a small café called “Gene’s Golden Grill,” a six-unit motel, and two trailer parks on 63 acres.

By the 1980s, after a large coal-powered power plant was opened a few miles away, the trailer park was home to nearly 100 people, most either gold miners, DiGrazia’s employees, or workers at the power plant.

DiGrazia, affectionately called the Mayor of Valmy, served as postmaster, fire chief, and just about every other civic job in the tiny community. He even established the Valmy Water Co. to provide free water to residents from a 10,000-gallon galvanized iron tank that was built over a well next to the railroad tracks. It had originally been used to water steam locomotives.

Valmy probably had its most significant brush with fame in the early 1980s after rock icon Bruce Springsteen posed for an album cover photo in front of Valmy’s 1930s-style gas station/general store (it was used on the cover of a live album released in Britain). For years, a copy of the album cover signed by Springsteen hung on a wall in the store.

Over the years, DiGrazia was the subject of countless newspaper and magazine articles. For many years, he wrote a column about the comings and goings in the community, titled, “The Valmy Badger,” which appeared in The Battle Mountain Bugle newspaper.

After DiGrazia’s death in 1990, Valmy was sold and the old classic wooden Shell station was replaced with a more contemporary fabricated building. While the charm of the old place is gone, you can still get gas and food in Valmy—or park your mobile home or mail a letter. Julia DiGrazia moved to Reno, where she died in 2002.