The Carson Valley is one of the earliest-settled, richest, and most
productive of the state's agricultural regions. In spring, summer, and
autumn, when the valley is bursting with life, the vast irrigated tracts
are a green velvet patchwork quilt upon which the stacks of baled hay stand
like giant cheeses, and cottonwoods and poplars rise up like flashing green
flames. The meadows are sopped with water from the Sierra, fat and languid
cattle browse placidly everywhere.
Far from being twins, Minden and Gardnerville, these sibling towns of the Carson
Valley have different fathers.
Gardnerville is a farm town established in the 1860s to serve the
agricultural population in a more conveniently central location than
longer-established Genoa at the foot of the Sierra. Minden is the
railroad's child, born in 1905 as a planned and platted subdivision with a
brick depot, a central park and a grid of quiet streets.
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