Mark Thompkins painting shows Lake Tahoe before settlers arrived.
“I didn’t know Fifth Street in Genoa used to be Fifth Avenue?” a visitor to the Genoa Courthouse Museum said on Saturday.
“Wait, what?” was essentially the reaction from both Curator Brenda Cullen and me.
But there it was inside the new post office exhibit, stenciled on a crate under the Dressler’s address in Nevada’s Oldest Town, “Fifth Avenue, Genoa, Nev.”
It goes to show that no matter how much time you work with something, there’s always a surprise detail someone else spots.
Cullen and museum volunteers spent the winter refreshing the Genoa Court House Museum and she took me on a tour Saturday as I wandered around town for Western Heritage Days.
The star of the museum’s reopening for the season was the Dat-So-La-Lee basket set up on the first floor, but there’s a lot of stuff upstairs that requires a look.
The paint was barely dry on Mark Tompkins’ painting looking across Lake Tahoe that occupied one corner of the second floor. The revitalized county office looks like 20-year Recorder Fred Klotz just got up and took a walk. The “no sitting” signs are the only thing allowed on chairs that originally belonged to Snowshoe Thompson.
Cullen said she spent a lot of time refreshing the courtroom that occupies most of the top floor of the former courthouse. It has a light, airy feel that I could easily see hosting actual legal proceedings in a pinch.
There is also a new Candy Dance exhibit that has posters from a fair percentage of the event, including the original Lew Hymers version.
On Monday, the Genoa Historic District Commission determined the appropriateness of a new sign for the old brick pile, rebuilt from the ashes of the 1910 fire, only to be supplanted a half-dozen years later by the Minden Courthouse.
The museum is open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. seven days a week. Admission is $5 for adults, $2 for children and free for kids 6 and younger or Historical Society members.
Kurt Hildebrand is editor of The Record-Courier. Contact him at khildebrand@recordcourier.com or 775-782-5122.
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