History is hard to preserve

“Hans Nelson has purchased a large building in Virginia City. He will tear it down and move it to Gardnerville and put up a two-story addition to his hotel.”

Genoa Weekly Courier

Aug. 28, 1896

It takes a little digging, but that big building Hans Nelson purchased from Virginia City is now the JT Basque Bar & Dining Room.

Nelson took over the Gardnerville Hotel, the town’s very first building in 1894, 130 years ago. The original building burned down in 1926, but Gardnerville volunteer firefighters kept the flames from spreading to the neighboring JT and the Midland Garage.

Of those three structures, only the JT remains. That’s true of much of early Gardnerville and is likely to continue with the inevitable demolition of the old Gardnerville laundry.

There is still a lot of history in Gardnerville, though with the exception of The JT, Perry’s Dry Goods, the Ritchford, its stables, and a few other homes, most Gilded Age relics from the town’s first big boom are no more. There are a variety of plaques and markers remembering those places like the East Fork Hotel torn down in 2014.

At the Gardnerville Town Board’s August meeting, Main Street Gardnerville Director Jen Tune read a note from a Carson Valley Middle School student participating in a history program about the town.

“Remembering our history fosters a sense of community and identity helping us understand how our town has evolved over time,” one student wrote.

We certainly couldn’t have expressed the sentiment better ourselves.

We believe that our history here is the key to our future, and that it’s critical that we preserve and document as much of it as we can.

But there is a point in the life of everything and everyone that time takes its toll.

We wish the laundry that started its life as the East Fork School years before there was a Gardnerville could be saved. But that’s not going to happen. However, in the laundry’s demise, perhaps Tune and others can find support to document the town’s history.

We’re certainly willing to help.