Work begins planning park for Dangberg Home Ranch

About three-dozen people attended the first master plan session for the Dangberg Home Ranch on Thursday.

Gardnerville dentist and one-time Dangberg cowboy Mike Fischer welcomed interested residents to the session at the CVIC Hall in Minden.

The 5.5-acre park is in the initial planning stages to determine just what residents would like to see offered at the site, just west of Highway 88 and south of the Carson River's East Fork.

The park's centerpiece are the buildings, including the ranch building, which housed Dangbergs for nearly 150 years.

Consultant Paul Brown said the Dangberg Home Ranch presented a remarkable opportunity.

"It has so much historical content intact and in its place," he said. "We felt it was important to care for the articles and understand how important their placement was. It is almost as though nothing was moved since the occupants left."

The consultants developed a three-dimensional model of the ranch house to show where they found each of the 18,802 items they catalogued.

Objects were sorted by type and then cleaned. The items are then grouped. Consultants estimated they have organized 6,553 items, and are a little more than half way through the project.

Project architect Pete Dubé said the first priority for the buildings is their roofs.

"The buildings leak," he said "We need to protect them as we would an artifact."

Last fall, sheathing was placed over the roofs to prevent any additional damage.

The cedar shingles will be replaced after the roof is taken off and a new roof installed.

"Our goal is to preserve the original design before we do the restoration work inside," he said.

State officials hope to begin work in Fall 2006 and finish in 2007. The inventory of artifacts will also be due for completion in 2007.

Work on the Home Ranch is being paid for using $2 million in state recreation funds.

When it opens, it will have parking and public access. Designers envision an interpretive center and are gathering information about what residents would like to see at the Home Ranch in the way of programs, history and resources.

Thursday's meeting was the first of several to gather information from people about what the home ranch will be.

While going through the slide show, H.F. Dangberg's great-grandson Steve Achard provided information about where some of the buildings were located.