Brown Station: The Ranch Under South Virginia Street

Above: the Peleg Brown Ranch buildings, facing northeast. Photographed by Martin Fisher for the Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS NV-25, as part of the 1994 record made before an elevated U.S. 395 was planned past the place. Library of Congress; no known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government.

If you drive South Virginia Street out past the Mount Rose Highway, you pass a gun shop in an old house, a barn behind it, another barn down the way with a horse trailer beside it, and a ranch house near the Walmart.

Two years ago one of those barns blew over in the wind, and nobody wrote anything about it.

Those buildings are the last loose pieces of a 620-acre ranch that was here before Reno existed, and the man who started it has his name on nothing. The parkway, the high school and the subdivision are named for the family that bought the place eighty-two years after he founded it.

His name was Peleg Brown.

1857: Two Brothers and Some Cattle

Joshua and Peleg Brown came into the Truckee Meadows in 1857, driving cattle. They were from Middletown, Rhode Island, sons of Pardon and Sarah Sanford Brown.

To put that date in its place: this is two years before the Comstock Lode was found, six years before Nevada was a territory, and a decade before there was a town called Reno. The only other people in the south valley were a handful of claimants and a stone house on Joshua's ground that gave the Stone House Ranch its name.

In 1858, Peleg bought the first parcel of what would become the Brown Ranch. In 1863 he married Elizabeth Gill. In 1866 he bought out his brother's interest and the whole thing was his.

By the end it ran to 620 acres at the north end of Steamboat Valley.

What He Actually Did

Peleg Brown is on the National Register in his own right, and the reason is not that he was rich.

He is credited, with a neighbour named Erwin Crane, with being among the first men to grow alfalfa in the Truckee Meadows — and with bringing irrigation to the southern valley.

That sounds dry until you work out what it means. The Comstock was about to consume everything: timber, beef, hay, grain, labour. The mines could pay any price. But somebody had to actually produce the feed, in a desert valley, which meant somebody had to get water onto the ground and grow something on it that would keep cattle alive through a Nevada winter.

Alfalfa was that crop, and irrigation was how you grew it.

In 1864 and 1865 Brown built his house and a barn and worked on the Truckee Ditch. The Steamboat Canal was finished in 1878. Those ditches are still in the ground under the subdivisions, and some of them still run.

The ranch also took in boarders and worked as a stage stop on the road between Reno and the Comstock. Everything going up to Virginia City came past the door.

Brown Station

And then in 1871 and 1872 the Virginia & Truckee Railroad was built straight across the ranch, and the company put a stop on it.

They called it Brown Station.

There is a short list of private individuals in Nevada who got a railroad station named after them on their own land, and a shorter list still of ones nobody has heard of now.

Peleg Brown died on 9 September 1878, the same year the Steamboat Canal was completed. He was forty-two.

The original Brown School was built on land he had donated.

Elizabeth outlived him by forty years and died in 1918. Their daughter Laura Wilcox ran the ranch after her mother, and in the end her estate sold it.

1940: The Man From Genoa

Louis Damonte came to America from Genoa, Italy, in 1909, aged about fourteen.

He married Louise Anselmo Damonte — and here is a detail the record gives flatly and which carries a whole story inside it: Louise was the widow of his own brother Jack, who died in 1915.

In 1940 Louis and Louise bought the Brown Ranch out of Laura Wilcox's estate.

What he did next is why the name is on everything. From 1945 he managed the Steamboat Canal and Irrigation Company and bought water rights — which in this valley is the only thing that matters. At their peak the Damontes held more than seven thousand acres.

Louise died in 1955, and their son Bennie's family moved into the 1864 house. Louis died in 1975 and divided his holdings among four children.

So the ground was Brown's for eighty-two years and Damonte's for thirty-five before the subdivisions started — and the subdivisions are called Damonte Ranch.

I do not think that is an injustice exactly. Louis Damonte earned his name on that valley with water rights and forty years of work. But it is worth knowing that the ranch he bought already had a railroad station, a school and a canal attached to another man's name, and that man is now on nothing at all.

What the Government Measured, and Why

Here is the part that makes this article possible.

In June 1994, two historians — Ana B. Koval and Katharine Boyne — produced a full Historic American Buildings Survey record of the ranch: HABS NV-25. Measured floor plans, site maps, a documented history, and photographs by Martin Fisher.

They did not do it because somebody loved the place. They did it because the Nevada Department of Transportation was planning an elevated section of U.S. 395 that would wreck the ranch's setting, and federal law requires that when a public project damages a historic property, somebody has to record it first.

That is what HABS is. It is not preservation. It is the paperwork you file before the damage.

Which is bleak, and also the reason there is a rights-free federal photograph of these buildings and a complete description of every structure on the place — and no such record of any of the other old houses on that road.

The ranch was listed on the National Register on 23 December 1994, six months after the survey.

The Five Buildings

Because of that survey we know exactly what stood there, which is the kind of detail nobody records about a working ranch until it is nearly gone:

• The main house, 1864. Two and a half storeys, wood frame, T-shaped, side-gabled — and Greek Revival, which the survey calls a rare example of that style in Nevada. In 1940 the Damontes lifted the whole house and put a concrete foundation under it. In 1955 the upstairs was rebuilt: fourteen small rooms were thrown together into larger bedrooms. Two of the original small rooms survive.
• The foreman's house, from the 1860s — one and a half storeys with a kitchen wing off the back. It was already deteriorating in 1994.
• The granary, frame on a stone foundation, and lined on the inside with tin to keep the rodents out of the grain.
• A stone cold-storage building — rubble stone, two floors, steeply pitched roof — later used as a garage. This is the oldest kind of building on the place and the sort that usually outlasts everything.
• ★ A play house. Eight feet by ten, built in the Bungalow style, made for Peleg Brown's granddaughter Ethel Tyler, who was born in 1893.

The buildings face east in a group, fenced, ringed by an irrigation ditch and old cottonwoods — which is how you can still pick out a ranch site from the road anywhere in this valley. Look for cottonwoods in a line. Somebody put water there.

★ The Italians

There is one page in that survey I did not expect, and it changed how I read this whole valley.

It reproduces the landowners along the ditch from a 1921 map. Here is the list:

Balsi. Bersani. Capurro & Laiolo. Casazza. Cerfoglio. Faretto. Ginnochio. Lombardi. Maddalena. Pecetti. Pezzi. Pincolini. Prosole. Questa. Quilici. Zolezzi.

Every one of them Italian.

By 1921 the ditch that Peleg Brown helped dig was watering an Italian farming colony in the south Truckee Meadows. Damonte from Genoa was not an outlier arriving late — he was joining a community that was already there, and he married into it.

Nevada's Italian story usually gets told as the Comstock, or as the charcoal burners. This is the other half of it: truck farms and dairies and alfalfa ground south of Reno, held by sixteen families, on water rights from the 1870s.

That is a whole article on its own and I have not written it yet.

The Ones Nobody Measured

Now back to the gun shop.

The house on South Virginia with the firearms business in it, the barns behind it, the barn and horse trailer down the road, the ranch house near the Walmart off Old Virginia — I can find no documented history for any of them.

Not a National Register nomination. Not a HABS record. No state survey. No article. Nothing.

They are almost certainly fragments of the same ranching landscape — the south valley names to look for are Brown, Damonte, Peckham, Zolezzi and Rossi — but I am not going to attach a family to a building on a guess, and anybody who tells you confidently whose ranch that gun shop used to be is probably repeating something somebody made up.

What is certain is the thing I started with. Two years ago a barn on that stretch blew over in the wind. It had presumably stood for the better part of a century. No agency recorded it, no newspaper reported it, and the only images of it standing are in private cameras.

That is the difference a federal highway project makes. The Brown Ranch got measured, drawn and photographed because the government wanted to build an overpass near it. The barn a mile up the road got nothing, because nothing was planned that required anybody to look.

We do not record what matters. We record what is in the way.

At a Glance: The Peleg Brown Ranch

• What: the Peleg Brown Ranch, also called the Louis Damonte Ranch, 12945 Old Virginia Road, Reno — between Old Virginia Road and South Virginia Street (U.S. 395), Section 21, T18N R20E.
• ★ 1857: brothers Joshua and Peleg Brown of Middletown, Rhode Island arrive in the Truckee Meadows with cattle — two years before the Comstock, a decade before Reno. 1858: Peleg buys the first parcel. 1866: buys out Joshua. The ranch reaches 620 acres.
• ★ Why he is on the National Register: credited, with Erwin Crane, as among the first to grow alfalfa in the Truckee Meadows, and with bringing irrigation to the southern valley. He worked on the Truckee Ditch (1864–65); the Steamboat Canal was completed 1878.
• A stage stop and boarding house on the road from Reno to the Comstock.
• ★★ 1871–72: the Virginia & Truckee Railroad was built across the ranch and the company established BROWN STATION.
• 9 September 1878: Peleg Brown dies, aged 42. The original Brown School is built on land he donated. His widow Elizabeth Gill Brown (1835–1918) outlives him forty years; daughter Laura Wilcox then runs the ranch.
• 1940: Louis Damonte (1895–1975), who came from Genoa in 1909, and Louise Anselmo Damonte (1896–1955) — the widow of his brother Jack — buy the ranch from the Wilcox estate.
• From 1945 Louis managed the Steamboat Canal and Irrigation Company and bought water rights; the Damonte holdings peaked at over 7,000 acres. Brown held the ground 82 years; Damonte 35 — and the subdivision is called Damonte Ranch.
• The buildings: the 1864 Greek Revival main house (2½ storeys, T-plan, a rare Greek Revival in Nevada; lifted onto a concrete foundation in 1940; its fourteen small upstairs rooms combined in 1955, two surviving); an 1860s foreman's house; a granary lined with tin against rodents; a rubble-stone cold-storage building; and ★ an 8×10 ft play house built for Peleg's granddaughter Ethel Tyler (b. 1893).
• ★ The 1921 ditch map lists the landowners along the canal: Balsi, Bersani, Capurro & Laiolo, Casazza, Cerfoglio, Faretto, Ginnochio, Lombardi, Maddalena, Pecetti, Pezzi, Pincolini, Prosole, Questa, Quilici, Zolezzi — an Italian farming colony in the south Truckee Meadows.
• ★ Recorded June 1994 as HABS NV-25 by Ana B. Koval and Katharine Boyne, photographs by Martin Fisher — commissioned because the Nevada Department of Transportation planned an elevated U.S. 395 that would damage the setting. Listed on the National Register 23 December 1994, reference 94001471.
• ⚠️ The other old buildings on that stretch of South Virginia — the house holding the gun shop, the barns behind it, the barn and horse trailer down the road, the ranch house near the Walmart off Old Virginia — have no documented history whatsoever. One of the barns blew over in the wind about two years ago and no record of it was made.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I go and see it?

The Peleg Brown ranch house is a private residence on Old Virginia Road and has been lived in by the same family since 1940. Look from the road. The other buildings further north are private property and an operating business, so the same applies.

Why is it called Damonte Ranch if Brown built it?

Because the Damontes were there when the land was developed, and because Louis Damonte spent thirty-five years assembling water rights across the south valley — more than seven thousand acres at the peak. Developers name subdivisions after the family they buy from, not the family who broke the ground eighty years earlier. Both men earned the valley; only one got the sign.

What is a HABS record and why does it matter?

The Historic American Buildings Survey is a federal programme that measures, draws and photographs historic buildings. The records go to the Library of Congress and are public domain. Crucially, surveys are usually commissioned because a federally funded project is about to harm a property — so a HABS record is often the last document made before something changes. It is not protection. It is a careful description of what you are about to lose.

Was there really a railroad station here?

Yes. The Virginia & Truckee was built across this ranch in 1871–72 and the company put a stop on it called Brown Station. The grade is still readable in places across the south valley.

Whose ranch was the gun shop house?

Nobody knows, and I am not going to invent an answer. There is no National Register nomination, no HABS record and no state survey for it. The likeliest route to a real answer is the Washoe County assessor's parcel record and the deed chain, and after that the Nevada Historical Society.

What happened to the barn that fell?

It blew over in the wind about two years ago. No agency recorded it, no newspaper reported it, and whatever photographs exist of it standing are in private hands. If you have any, they are now the record.

Conclusion

A man of twenty-one came out from Rhode Island with his brother and some cattle, in a valley with almost nobody in it, and worked out that the money was not in the silver — it was in feeding the men who dug it.

So he put water on the ground. He grew alfalfa before anybody here grew alfalfa. He fed travellers, boarded them, dug canals, and when the railroad came through they named the stop after him. He gave the land for the school. And then he died at forty-two, in the same year his canal was finished, and his wife ran the place for the next forty years.

Eighty-two years later a fourteen-year-old from Genoa who had arrived with nothing bought the whole thing, married his dead brother's widow, spent his life acquiring water rights, and ended with seven thousand acres.

Both of those are enormous lives. Neither of them is a story most people in Reno could tell you, and one of them has a parkway.

Meanwhile, a mile up the road, there is a house with a gun shop in it and a couple of barns, and in all likelihood they are the last standing pieces of that same world — the one where this whole valley was hay and ditches and cottonwoods. Nobody has ever written their history down. Two years ago one of the barns fell over in the wind, and the only thing that happened was that it was gone.

We did not lose that barn's history when it fell. We lost it long before, when we decided it was ordinary.

Look for the cottonwoods in a line. Somebody put water there, and the water is why everything else happened.

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

Almost everything above comes from one remarkable document: the Historic American Buildings Survey record of the Peleg Brown Ranch, HABS NV-25, compiled in June 1994 by Ana B. Koval and Katharine Boyne of Rainshadow Associates for a Nevada Department of Transportation undertaking, with photographs by Martin Fisher. It is a federal public-domain document and it is free to read in full, and it draws in turn on Myron Angel, John Townley's Tough Little Town on the Truckee, David Thompson's Nevada: A History of Changes, Cecil W. Creel's A History of Nevada Agriculture, a 1962 talk by Dorris B. Reed, and a family memoir by Emily Damonte Bianco. The National Register listing is reference 94001471, 23 December 1994. ⚠️ Nothing in this article attributes any building other than the Brown ranch itself to any family; those attributions do not exist in the record.

• Peleg Brown Ranch, HABS NV-25 — Library of Congress — the full survey: history, measured floor plans, site maps and photographs. Public domain. The best single document about any ranch in the south Truckee Meadows.
• The HABS written history (PDF) — sixty-odd pages on the Brown and Damonte families, the canals, and the Italian landowners of 1921.
• Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress — search your own town. If a federal project ever threatened a building near you, there may be a measured drawing of it sitting in Washington, free to download.
• Peleg Brown Ranch — Reno Historical — a short illustrated account.
• Washoe County Assessor — parcel records and build dates, which is where the undocumented houses on South Virginia would have to be started.
• The Glendale School — the other end of the valley and the other end of the same settlement layer, 1857 at Stone & Gates' Crossing.
• Crystal Peak — what happened to the places that fed the Comstock when the railroad arrived.