Down to the Last: Five Truckee Meadows Ranches and How They Ended

Above: a storage shed at the Antonio Sala Ranch on Franktown Road, Washoe County, photographed by Martin Fisher for the Historic American Buildings Survey. It is not one of the five ranches below — it is what the federal record happened to keep of a sixth.

In 2000 a rancher named Steve Mestre, watching the valley fill in around him, said this:

“We're down to the last. They have literally developed the whole valley.”

He was right, and he was also about twenty-five years early to find out how right.

What follows is five pieces of ground in the Truckee Meadows. All five were ranches. All five are still there in the sense that the dirt is still there. What happened to them after that is five completely different stories, and together they are a fairly complete account of how a valley stops being agricultural.

One was erased. One was assembled. One is still in the family. One has been fought over for a quarter of a century and is neither built nor saved. And one kept its name and gave up everything else.

The Belt

Start with a map.

There is a ditch map of the southern Truckee Meadows drawn in 1921, and what it shows, parcel by parcel, is a valley floor held almost entirely by Italian families.

The names on it: Angelo Balsi. H. Bersani. Capurro & Laiolo. B. & A. Casazza. David Casazza. Paulo Casazza. A. Cerfoglio. D. & P. Cerfoglio. Angelo Faretto. A. Faretto & Sons. Catherine Faretto. Domengo Fillpelli. N. Fillpelli. S. Geravanta. Nick Ginnochio. Guilo Lombardi. J. P. Maddalena. F. A. Pecetti. J. B. Pecetti. Pietro Pecetti. Domingo Pezzi. A. Pincolini. John Prosole. Louis Prosole. E. F. Questa. Quilici & Company. G. Zolezzi.

Twenty-seven entries. One valley.

They are there because of the Comstock. Italian labourers came to Nevada to cut wood — the mines ate timber at a rate that is difficult to describe to anyone who has not seen the square-set framing — and the woodcutting crews worked the Sierra and the Virginia Range through the 1860s and 1870s. When that work ended, a great many of them did not leave.

They came down off the mountain, settled along what is now South Virginia Street, and farmed. And then, having saved their wages, they bought the land they had been farming. By the end of the century Italian families held much of the cropland of the western half of the valley, from Steamboat to Verdi, in what one historian simply called an Italian belt south of Reno.

That is the context. Now the five.

I. Pecetti — Erased

9300 Gateway Drive, at the foot of the hill below Huffaker Park.

The legal description of this ground is “Fractional southwest quarter of Section 5 and northwest quarter of Section 8, Township 18 North, Range 20 East.”

That is worth translating. It means this parcel was never part of a subdivision. Nobody ever platted it into lots. It was cut straight off the federal survey grid, and it spans two whole sections — which is to say it was ranch-scale ground, described the way ranch ground is described.

Three Pecettis are on the 1921 map: F. A. Pecetti, J. B. Pecetti and Pietro Pecetti.

The house that stood here was built in 1918. Two storeys, with an enormous tree beside it. By the end it was surrounded by apartment complexes and business park, and the county assessor was still carrying the parcel as having no water, no sewer, and an unpaved street. A ranch to the last line of the record.

Here is what happened to it, in five deeds.

• 2005 — Elmo and Virginia Pecetti to Elmo Pecetti.
• 2009 — Elmo Pecetti to the Holly J. Pecetti Trust.
• 17 October 2017 — the Pecetti trust sells. $1,680,000. After a century, the family is out.
• 23 September 2021 — resold. $3,800,000.
• 27 April 2022 — resold again. $5,769,500.

One point six eight million to five point seven seven million in four years and six months. The ground tripled while sitting still.

The 1918 house did not survive the last transaction. It was demolished. Seventy-nine townhomes are going in.

There is a particular cruelty in the arithmetic. The Pecettis held that ground for the better part of a century and sold it for $1.68 million. Two owners who held it for a combined four and a half years, and who did nothing to it except own it, took out four million more.

II. Quilici — Assembled

Longley Lane, where it runs past Huffaker.

Two houses stand here: 7445, built in 1940, eleven hundred square feet, wood shingle on frame; and 7455, built in 1945, twelve hundred square feet, brick veneer on frame under a wood shingle roof.

Modest houses. But run the whole of Section 6, Township 18 North, Range 20 East for anything built before 1960 and you get eight results, and these two are the oldest houses in it. Everything else in that square mile is 1951 or later.

And like Gateway, the legal description gives it away: “Fractional northeast quarter of the northeast quarter, Section 6.” A quarter of a quarter section, cut off a larger holding, never platted.

The 1921 map carries Quilici & Company.

What stood on this lane before the houses was better than the houses. There was a cluster of barns built in the 1880s. They came down in October 2001. A separate Quilici barn was still standing as recently as a decade ago.

On 4 October 2019, the Quilici family trust sold out for $814,623.

What has happened since is quieter than Gateway and, in its way, more ominous. Five parcels on that lane — the two houses, a shop building, and two vacant lots, about 4.85 acres in all — are now held by a single limited liability company. All five are zoned industrial commercial.

The houses are still standing. One of them is still on a well and a septic tank, in the middle of industrial south Reno, in 2026.

Nothing has been demolished. Nothing has been built. An assemblage is a held breath.

III. Casazza — Still There

Holcomb Ranch Lane.

This is the one that is still a ranch yard, and it is the reason this article exists.

The county dates the building here to 1920. What is on the ground is not one building but a complete working arrangement:

• A hipped-roof farmhouse, white clapboard, with a full-width porch on bracketed posts and a dormer in the front slope. A Nevada farmhouse of about 1900 to 1920, and a good one.
• A small brick building beside a running ditch, with a single barred window — the shape and siting of a milk house.
• A board-and-batten barn under a shake roof, with flanking sheds and a galvanised steel grain tank standing beside it.
• Pasture. A white picket fence. Water running through.

Three Casazzas are on the 1921 map: B. & A. Casazza, David Casazza and Paulo Casazza.

And the parcel is still held by the Casazza family trust.

Not sold to a developer. Not assembled. Not entitled for anything. A hundred and six years on, the same name is on the deed, the barn is still standing, and there is still water in the ditch.

Of everything in this article, this is the only place where you could stand in the yard and understand what the other four used to be.

IV. Ballardini — Besieged

Evans Creek, below the Mount Rose front, south of McCarran and west of the Lakeridge golf course.

This is the big one. The family ranch ran to about fifteen hundred acres. The piece that changed hands is 1,019 acres in four parcels, which is to say it is larger than the other four in this article put together, several times over.

As late as 1983 the county's own planning document for the area described its future as a deer sanctuary. In 2000 it was called one of only two working ranches left in the valley.

In 1998 the Ballardini family sold the 1,019 acres for $8.5 million to a limited partnership based in Minnesota.

And then nothing happened, for twenty-five years, extremely loudly.

• 2000 — up to 995 homes proposed on the northern 425 acres. The land-use change is denied. A citizens' group forms specifically to fight it.
• 2003–04 — Reno denies annexation. Washoe County begins eminent domain proceedings. Settled in 2006.
• 2007 — the southern 600 acres are folded into Reno's service area.
• 2014 — the annexation application is withdrawn after staff recommend denial. The same year, the trailhead opens.
• 27 May 2020 — annexation denied again. The stated reasons include water rights disputes and fire danger.
• 2021 — the developer sues. A judge rules it has not made its case.

Twenty-three years, four refusals, one eminent domain action and a lawsuit. The land is neither developed nor protected. It is simply contested, indefinitely, while people walk their dogs on it.

And here is the thing I could not find, which bothers me more than anything else in this article. There is no accessible history of the Ballardini ranch before 1997. Not a settlement date. Not a founder's name. Not what they raised. Every available account of a ranch that gave its name to a thousand acres and a trailhead begins at the moment the family sold it.

Fifteen hundred acres, and the record starts with the realtor.

V. Seven Acre — Repurposed

5095 West Acoma Road, on Thomas Creek.

Seven and a fifth acres, a creek through it, a stone-and-timber building with river cobble below and weathered board above, and a view down the valley. It is now an event venue. People get married there.

I want to be careful here, because this one is not like the other four and I am not going to pretend it is.

The county dates the building to 1950. The parcel sits inside a platted subdivision — not an aliquot ranch description like Gateway and Longley, but a surveyed lot in a recorded map. It sold in February 2020 for $1.2 million, and it is held by a family trust with a California mailing address. No Thomas Creek ranching family appears on the 1921 map.

So: the stone work is handsome and the building may well incorporate a genuine barn. But I have found no evidence that this is historic ranch fabric, and someone needs to stand in front of it with a tape measure before anybody writes that it is.

What is certain is the shape of the ending. Seven acres, a creek, the word “ranch” in the name, and not one animal on it. The name survived; the function did not.

That is its own kind of outcome, and it is probably the most common one. Drive the south valley and count how many subdivisions, business parks and venues carry the word ranch. Damonte Ranch. Caughlin Ranch. Arrowcreek. The word is doing a great deal of work out here, and almost none of it is agricultural.

What the Records Do and Do Not Say

Three of these five — Pecetti, Quilici and Casazza — are on the 1921 ditch map by name. That is documented and it is not an inference.

Ballardini is not on it, and neither is any Thomas Creek name attached to the Seven Acre parcel. The Ballardini ground sits on the western flank, outside the stretch that map covers. It may well belong to the same story — the name certainly fits the pattern, and Italian families did take the western cropland — but fits the pattern is not evidence, and I would rather say so than quietly round it up.

There is a second trap worth naming. There is a well-documented Quilici ranch founded in 1881 in Dayton, in Lyon County, still farmed by descendants. It is a different place. Whether the Longley Lane Quilicis are the same family has not been established anywhere I can reach, and the two should not be welded together just because the surname matches.

The deeper problem is that the county's year-built dates are nearly useless as history. Over and over in this valley the assessor's date is younger than the building. A Victorian cottage in Carson City carried as 1966. A brick house on South Virginia carried as 1942 that was built for a pioneer rancher in 1881. The roll records when a parcel was last assessed, not when somebody raised a wall. Treat every one of those dates as a floor and never as a fact.

At a Glance: Five Ranches, Five Endings

• The 1921 ditch map of the southern Truckee Meadows records twenty-seven Italian landholdings across the valley floor — Balsi, Bersani, Capurro & Laiolo, Casazza, Cerfoglio, Faretto, Fillpelli, Geravanta, Ginnochio, Lombardi, Maddalena, Pecetti, Pezzi, Pincolini, Prosole, Questa, Quilici, Zolezzi.
• Origin: Italian woodcutters who supplied the Comstock mines came down off the mountain, settled along South Virginia Street, farmed, and bought the ground they had been working.
• PECETTI — 9300 Gateway Drive. House built 1918. Ground described as a fractional quarter spanning Sections 5 and 8. Still carried with no water, no sewer, unpaved street. Sold out of the family 17 Oct 2017 for $1,680,000; resold 2021 at $3,800,000; resold 2022 at $5,769,500. Demolished. 79 townhomes.
• QUILICI — 7445 and 7455 Longley Lane. Built 1940 and 1945 — the oldest houses in their entire survey section. An 1880s barn cluster on the lane came down in October 2001. Sold 4 Oct 2019 for $814,623. Five parcels, 4.85 acres, now one owner, all zoned industrial. One house still on well and septic.
• CASAZZA — Holcomb Ranch Lane. County date 1920. Farmhouse, brick milk house on a ditch, board-and-batten barn with shake roof, galvanised grain tank. Still in the family trust. The only intact yard of the five.
• BALLARDINI — Evans Creek. Family ranch about 1,500 acres; 1,019 acres sold in 1998 for $8.5 million. Designated a future deer sanctuary in 1983. 995 homes proposed and denied in 2000; annexation denied 2003–04, withdrawn 2014, denied again 27 May 2020; eminent domain begun 2003–04 and settled 2006; developer's suit failed in 2021. Trailhead opened 2014. No accessible history of the ranch before 1997.
• SEVEN ACRE — 5095 W. Acoma Road, Thomas Creek. 7.21 acres, county date 1950, inside a platted subdivision, sold Feb 2020 for $1.2 million, now an event venue. No historic ranch fabric established.
• Not established: that the Ballardinis belong to the ditch-map group; that the Longley Lane Quilicis are the Dayton Quilicis of 1881; that the Seven Acre building is historic.
• Method warning: county year-built dates in this valley are routinely younger than the buildings. A floor, never a fact.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why were so many Truckee Meadows ranchers Italian?

The Comstock consumed timber on an industrial scale, and Italian labour cut most of it. When the mines slowed, the woodcutters did not go home. They settled along South Virginia Street, farmed the valley floor, saved their wages and bought the land they had been working. By 1900 Italian families held much of the cropland from Steamboat to Verdi.

How can you tell ranch ground from a subdivision on paper?

Read the legal description. A subdivision lot is a lot in a recorded map. Ranch ground is described in quarters and quarter-quarters of a numbered section — "the fractional northeast quarter of the northeast quarter, Section 6" — straight off the federal survey grid. If a parcel in the middle of a city still carries an aliquot description, nobody ever platted it, and you are standing on a piece of somebody's ranch.

Which of these can I actually go and see?

Casazza, on Holcomb Ranch Lane, from the public road — it is a private home, so look, do not trespass. Ballardini is open space with a public trailhead. Seven Acre is a venue and books events. Longley Lane still has the two houses on it. Gateway is gone.

Is the 1918 Gateway house really gone?

Yes. Demolished after the 2022 sale, with a 79-unit townhome development going in on the site. The parcel is vacant.

Why is there no history of the Ballardini ranch?

Nobody has written it down anywhere publicly reachable. Everything available begins in 1997, when the sale negotiations started. This is more common than it sounds: the places that stay in one family quietly for a century generate almost no public record until the moment they change hands.

Does being an old ranch protect any of this?

No. None of these five carries any historic designation. Nothing here is listed, surveyed or protected. The only thing keeping the Casazza yard standing is that the family has not sold it.

Conclusion

Five ranches. Five endings.

Pecetti is gone — a house from 1918 pulled down so the ground could carry seventy-nine townhomes, after four and a half years in which the land tripled in price without anybody touching it.

Quilici is assembled — two houses from the forties still standing, five parcels consolidated under one owner, zoned industrial, one of them still drinking from its own well. Waiting.

Ballardini is besieged — a thousand acres sold in 1998 and fought over ever since, denied four times, taken to eminent domain, litigated, and still neither built nor saved.

Seven Acre is repurposed — the word ranch kept, everything the word meant let go.

And Casazza is still there. Same family, same barn, water still running in the ditch beside the milk house.

That is the whole arc of the valley in five parcels, and the part worth sitting with is how little of it was anybody's decision. No villain pulled the 1918 house down out of spite. The Pecettis got a fair price for ground they had held a century. Every denial on the Ballardini land was lawful and so was every application. The valley did not lose its ranches to an event. It lost them to arithmetic, one deed at a time, over about forty years.

What that leaves is a landscape where the names have outlived the things. Damonte Ranch is an interchange. Ballardini Ranch is a trailhead. Seven Acre Ranch is a wedding venue. Holcomb Ranch Lane is a road through houses — and the one yard on it that is still a ranch is a private family's, unlisted and unprotected, held together by nothing but their decision not to sell.

Twenty-seven Italian names on a map in 1921. Go and find them now.

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 1921 ditch map and its roster of Italian landowners, along with the account of Comstock woodcutters settling the valley floor, come from the Historic American Buildings Survey documentation for the Peleg Brown Ranch (HABS No. NV-25), a federal public-domain record held by the Library of Congress, which in turn draws on John Townley and David Thompson. Parcel data, legal descriptions, construction dates, ownership and sale prices are from the Washoe County Assessor's real property records and the county parcel layer, pulled October 2026. The 1880s Longley Lane barn cluster, its demolition in October 2001 and the surviving Quilici and Holcomb barns are recorded in a 2016 survey of the region's historic barns. The Gateway Drive house, its 1918 date and its demolition are reported by Our Town Reno, 5 May 2023. The Ballardini chronology is assembled from the Washoe Regional Action Plan record and the archives of the citizens' group formed to oppose the development. ⚠ The Ballardinis do not appear on the 1921 map and no pre-1997 history of their ranch was found. ⚠ No historic fabric has been established at the Seven Acre parcel. ⚠ The Longley Lane Quilicis have not been connected to the Dayton Quilici ranch of 1881.

• Peleg Brown Ranch, HABS No. NV-25 — documentation — the federal file, public domain. The 1921 ditch map roster is in Part III. The single best document on Italian ranching in this valley.
• Antonio Sala Ranch, Franktown Road — HABS — another Washoe County Italian ranch in the federal record, photographed by Martin Fisher.
• Preserving Reno's historic barns — the 2016 survey. Names the Quilici barn, the Holcomb barn, the Ferretto buildings and the 1880s Longley Lane cluster lost in 2001.
• What's That Construction Project? 9300 Gateway Drive — the 1918 house, the tree, and what replaced them.
• Evans Creek Property (Ballardini Ranch) — the full twenty-five-year chronology of applications, denials and litigation.
• Brown Station: The Ranch Under South Virginia Street — the ranch at the centre of this belt, and the one that got documented properly.
• Auburn: The Mill Town That Was Here Before Reno — what stood on the valley floor before the ranches.
• The House That Was Never Built There — on why a county's year-built date is a floor and not a fact.