The Turkey Pen in Right Field: Governors Bowl and the Man Who Built It

In 1930 a man who fixed cars for a living bought four acres of river-bottom flat halfway between Reno and Sparks and built the best baseball field in Nevada on it.

His name was Jack Threlkel. He owned the Reno Garage, and he had been paying for Reno ball teams out of his own pocket through the 1920s, the way a certain kind of businessman did in a certain kind of town.

What he built had a wooden grandstand, and it was reportedly the only grass-covered ball field in the state of Nevada.

It also had a chicken and turkey pen in the right-field corner.

That is not a joke and it is not a metaphor. If you pulled one deep to right at Threlkel's park, the ball went in with the birds.

Four Acres on the Highway

Look at where he put it, because the siting is the whole idea.

That ground is open river flat north of the Truckee, between what are now East Fourth and East Seventh Streets, and in 1930 it was outside the city limits of both Reno and Sparks — the empty strip in the middle that neither town had got to yet.

But it was not empty of traffic. Four generations of through-route cross or touch that parcel, and every one of them is now recognised as historically significant:

• The Central Pacific Railroad, which has run across it since 1868.
• The Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental road.
• The Victory Highway.
• U.S. 40, which became East Fourth Street.

So: a man who made his money repairing automobiles bought land on the busiest automobile road in the state, in the gap between two towns, and put a ballpark on it. Every car going from one town to the other drove past his field. Some of them had been fixed at his garage.

★ A correction worth making, because it is easy to get wrong. This is not the Glendale townsite. Stone and Gates' Crossing — Glendale — and the old Glendale School are about two and a half miles east-southeast, and on the other side of the river. Same corridor, different ground.

The Lights

In 1940 Threlkel improved the grandstand and put up lights.

Night baseball was still a novelty — the major leagues had only played their first night game in 1935 — and in a town the size of Reno a lighted field was a genuine event. After the lights went in the park drew hundreds of spectators a game and pulled in teams from across the region.

Then the war came and it closed.

It reopened, and it ran for about thirty years in total, and the thing to understand about it is what it was not.

Not the Pros — and That Matters

If you go looking for Reno baseball history you will find the Silver Sox, and a long list of men who went on to the major leagues, and none of it happened here.

Reno's professional baseball lived at Moana, out on Moana Lane. Moana Stadium opened in 1946, was rebuilt in 1961, and was demolished in July 2012. The Reno Silver Sox played there in the Sunset League from 1947 to 1949 — a New York Giants farm club that won the thing in 1948 — then the Far West League, then the California League from 1955 to 1992. The Reno Padres followed, then the Chukars and BlackJacks, then the Aces.

Roberto Alomar, Bobby Cox, Dennis Eckersley, Ozzie Guillen, John Kruk, Benito Santiago. All of them passed through Moana. None of them played at Governors Bowl.

There is a nice wrinkle in the chronology, though. Moana had a ball field first, but Threlkel built the first real stadium — grandstand, grass, lights — and Moana Stadium did not open until 1946, sixteen years after he started. For a decade and a half, the best place to watch baseball in northern Nevada was a semipro field with poultry in right.

And when Threlkel died, the play moved to Moana.

Bud Beasley

One player's name survives from Threlkel's teams, and he turned out to matter more than any of the men who came through Moana.

Bud Beasley pitched for Threlkel in the early 1930s while he was a student at the University of Nevada. He then became the baseball coach at Reno High School from 1936 to 1974 — thirty-eight years — and took a state championship in 1962 with Fred Dallimore pitching for him.

Thirty-eight years of Reno teenagers learned the game from a man who learned it on a grass field with a turkey pen in the corner.

That is the actual transmission line of baseball in this town, and it does not run through any professional club.

Nobody Knows Why It Is Called Governors Bowl

I want to be straight about this one, because I looked hard and came up empty.

No source anywhere explains the name. Not the city, not the county, not the state, not the press, not a single local history. I went through the Nevada governors of the period one by one looking for a connection and found nothing.

Here is the best reading I can offer, and I am labelling it as a reading rather than a fact.

★ The land belongs to the State of Nevada. When the City of Reno wanted the site in 2020 it had to buy a park it had been operating for years, and the parcel adjoins the state's own office complex on Galletti Way. A city ball field sitting on the Governor's ground would acquire that name the way these things always do — by people calling it that until it stuck.

And "Bowl" is probably just the ground. The field sits in a depression; county documents refer to the park sloping, and later reporting distinguishes "the bowl" from the land above it. No bowl game, no trophy, no ceremony. Just a dip in the river flat.

There is one document that would settle it. The park was formally recorded as a cultural resource in 2022, under the designation C408, and found not eligible for the National Register. A recording form exists and nobody has read it. It can be requested from the state preservation office, and I intend to.

1960

Jack Threlkel died in 1960. The land was sold and the grandstand was torn down.

A playing field stayed on the ground. It kept the name, and for another sixty years Governor's Bowl Park was where Reno played adult league ball, right up until 2020.

What happened on that field between 1960 and 2020 is, as far as I can find, completely unrecorded. Sixty years of baseball on the same patch of river flat and not one account of it anywhere. That is a longer run than the famous part, and it is a blank.

What Is There Now

In November 2020 the City of Reno agreed to buy the site for about $2.2 million, and the councils voted it through on 18 November 2020.

The ground is now the Nevada Cares Campus, Washoe County's homeless services campus, and this is the factual record of it:

• A 45,900 square foot shelter opened on 17 May 2021.
• A Safe Camp opened that June.
• Fifty modular units — the rows you can see from the air, where the outfield was — began arriving in January 2022.
• A Resource Center opened 1 December 2023, a Welcome Center in August 2024, and fifty permanent supportive housing units in spring 2025.
• The campus covers about eighteen acres. Construction through May 2024 came to about $78.8 million — county, state, federal, city and private money. It is owned by Washoe County.

The second phase passed six to one. The dissenting vote was Jenny Brekhus.

I am not going to editorialise about any of that. People live there. It is the present, not history, and it is somebody else's story to tell.

But one piece of it is history, and it is the reason I wrote this.

The Street

For ninety years that ground carried the name of the man who built the ballpark.

Threlkel Street ran north and south through the block between Fourth and Seventh — straight through where the diamond had been. The shelter's address was 1800 Threlkel Street.

On the nineteenth of October, 2023, the county's housing and homeless services department asked the regional street naming committee to change it to Cares Drive.

The reason given on the staff memo was that people kept misspelling "Threlkel."

The request was granted. 1800 Threlkel Street became 100 Cares Drive.

So the last trace of Jack Threlkel in the city of Reno — the only thing left anywhere on that ground with his name on it — was removed because it was difficult to type.

At a Glance: Governors Bowl

• What: a ballpark built in 1930 by Jack Threlkel, owner of the Reno Garage, on about four acres of East Fourth Street halfway between Reno and Sparks — outside both city limits at the time.
• ★ Reportedly the only grass-covered ball field in Nevada, with a wooden grandstand — and a chicken and turkey pen in the right-field corner.
• Lights added 1940. After that it drew hundreds a game and brought teams from across the region. Closed during the Second World War, then reopened.
• Ran about thirty years. Threlkel died in 1960; the land was sold and the grandstand came down. A playing field survived as Governor's Bowl Park, hosting adult-league baseball until 2020.
• ★ Not the professionals. Reno's pro baseball was at Moana — Moana Stadium opened 1946, rebuilt 1961, demolished July 2012. Silver Sox (Sunset League 1947–49, a Giants farm club, champions 1948; California League 1955–92), Reno Padres 1982–87, Aces from 2009. Alomar, Bobby Cox, Eckersley, Guillen, Kruk and Santiago all played at Moana, not here.
• The wrinkle: Moana had a field first, but Threlkel built the first real stadium — and Moana Stadium did not open until sixteen years after he started.
• ★ Bud Beasley pitched for Threlkel in the early 1930s while at the University of Nevada, then coached baseball at Reno High School from 1936 to 1974 — thirty-eight years — winning the 1962 state championship with Fred Dallimore pitching.
• ★ Nobody knows why it is called Governors Bowl. No source explains it. Best available reading: the land belongs to the State of Nevada (Reno had to buy a park it had been running), and "bowl" is literal — the field sits in a depression.
• The document that would settle it: the park was recorded as cultural resource C408 in 2022 and found not National Register eligible. That recording form exists and has never been read.
• The ground before: open river flat crossed by four generations of through-route — the Central Pacific Railroad since 1868, the Lincoln Highway, the Victory Highway and U.S. 40. ⚠️ Not the Glendale townsite, which is 2.5 miles east-southeast across the river.
• Now: the Nevada Cares Campus. City agreed to buy November 2020 for about $2.2M; shelter opened 17 May 2021; fifty modular units from January 2022; about 18 acres and roughly $78.8 million through May 2024. Owned by Washoe County.
• ★★ Threlkel Street ran through the old diamond for ninety years. On 19 October 2023 it was renamed Cares Drive. The stated reason on the staff memo: people kept misspelling "Threlkel." 1800 Threlkel Street became 100 Cares Drive.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I go and see it?

The ground is now the Nevada Cares Campus and people live there. It is not a historical site to visit, and nobody should be wandering it looking for a ballpark. You can see the shape of the bowl from East Seventh.

Was Governors Bowl ever a professional ballpark?

No. It was semipro and amateur throughout — Threlkel's own team, visiting regional clubs, and later adult league ball. Reno's professional baseball, and every famous name associated with it, belongs to Moana Stadium on the other side of town.

Why is it called Governors Bowl?

Nobody has written down an answer. The most likely explanation is the plainest: the land is the State of Nevada's, and the field sits in a dip. There is a 2022 cultural resource recording form for the park that has never been read publicly, and that is where the answer probably is.

Was there really a turkey pen in right field?

Yes. It is in the record of the park, and it is the sort of detail that only survives because somebody found it funny enough to repeat. A grass outfield and a poultry pen in the same four acres tells you exactly what kind of operation this was.

Who was Bud Beasley?

A University of Nevada student who pitched for Threlkel's team in the early 1930s, and then coached baseball at Reno High School for thirty-eight years, from 1936 to 1974, winning a state title in 1962. If you want the line of descent from this ballpark to modern Reno baseball, it runs through him and not through any professional club.

What happened to the grandstand?

It was torn down after Threlkel died in 1960 and the land was sold. No photograph of it has surfaced in any rights-clear collection.

Conclusion

There is a particular kind of man who shows up over and over in the history of small western cities, and almost never gets written about, because what he did was not a career.

He ran a business — a garage, a feed store, a hardware shop. He made enough money to have some left over. And instead of keeping it he bought a team's uniforms, and then some land, and then lumber for a grandstand, and then, in 1940, light poles. He did it for thirty years. He was not a philanthropist and there is no foundation with his name on it. He just liked baseball and he had four acres.

Everything in this town that we now think of as civic — the fields, the halls, the parks — started with somebody like that, and the record almost never keeps them, because they did not hold office and they did not leave an institution behind.

What Jack Threlkel left behind was a street sign.

And in October 2023 that came down too, because the name was hard to spell.

I do not think anybody did anything wrong. A street in a shelter campus needs a name people can find, and Cares Drive does the job. That is exactly the point. Nothing malicious is required to erase somebody. It is enough that remembering them is slightly inconvenient.

The best grass field in Nevada, with a turkey pen in right, and a man who paid for all of it out of a garage on Fourth Street.

Now you know, which is all that was ever needed.

We are always drawn to the places where Nevada's history is still out there to be touched. To bring a piece of that era home, explore our curated collection at The Eclection.

Resources & Further Reading

The account of Threlkel's park — the four acres, the grass, the grandstand, the poultry pen, the 1940 lights and the closure during the war — traces back to an oral history recorded with Bud Beasley at the University of Nevada in 2001, and reaches print through a public radio piece on early Reno baseball and through the Fourth Street and Prater Way History Project, a substantial oral-history and historic-context study produced for the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County. The campus dates and figures are from the public record of the City of Reno and Washoe County. The street renaming is on the record of the Regional Street Naming Committee, 19 October 2023. ⚠️ Much of the remaining detail — the name of Threlkel's team, his obituary, the capacity of the grandstand, and the sixty years of ball played on the site after 1960 — sits unread in the sports pages of the Reno papers.

• KUNR — the Reno public radio station; its local history segments are where the Threlkel account surfaced in print.
• Fourth Street / Prater Way History Project, RTC of Washoe County — an unusually good piece of applied local history covering the whole corridor this ballpark sat in, with oral histories.
• Nevada State Historic Preservation Office — holds the 2022 recording form for the park, cultural resource C408, which is the document most likely to explain the name.
• UNR Special Collections and University Archives — the Oral History Program, and the Reno Gazette-Journal photograph negatives.
• Washoe County Housing and Homeless Services — the public record of the Nevada Cares Campus.
• The Glendale School: Nevada's Oldest Schoolhouse, Moved Twice — the other end of the same corridor, and the oldest thing still standing near it.
• The House That Students Built — on what survives, what does not, and why it usually comes down to who held the deed.