The Kinsey House will join Mormon Station State Historic Park after being purchased from the family that owned it for 40 years.
There was zero opposition to a special use permit that will allow the expansion of Mormon Station State Historic Park into the Kinsey property next door.
Planning commissioners approved the permit for a use of community significance 7-0 on Tuesday.
That doesn’t entirely capture a decision that will preserve the first two-story brick structure in Nevada, built in 1856 by Stephen Kinsey, the nephew of Mormon Station founder John Reese.
The Conservation Fund purchased the property at the end of 2024 for $1.1 million after the death of last owner Betty Bourne on Oct. 29, 2023.
The Bourne family had owned the property since 1983.
Conservation Fund spokesman Gavin Kakol told planning commissioners the 1.36-acre property includes the 2,862-square-foot home and a portion of the ancient apple orchard.
The property will remain zoned 1-acre single family residential with approval of the permit.
Access to the property will be on a walking trail through the Mormon Station Fort. It will be a while before the house is going to be ready for tours, said Nevada Parks and Recreation State Manager and former Mormon Station Ranger Chris Johnson.
“The grant funding we got does have some extra in it for initial development,” he said. “Restoring the house is obviously going to be a project. We’ll beautify the property back to its glory days, include some picnic tables under the trees and it will be another place where people can come, enjoy and learn the history of our state.”
Johnson said it could be three years before the property would be open to the public.
“The plan is to preserve the exiting trees, and it would be day-use only,” Johnson said. “We would maintain the house in a way that is historically accurate and aesthetically pleasing.
There wouldn’t be access to the property from the north side.
Senior Planning Official Lucille Rao said that existing parking for Mormon Station should suffice for the added site.
Planning commissioners were enthusiastic, with Jim McKalip expressing joy over the proposal.
“Frankly, I just love this,” he said. “Preserving the oldest homes in the Valley is fantastic.”
Genoa Town Board members endorsed the permit on condition that they be consulted on changes to the property.
Genoa Historic District Commissioners won’t have any say on the property, however, because its zoned residential. The commission’s only purview is for the aesthetics of commercial and public property in downtown.
Rao said that it’s possible the property would be zoned to match the rest of Mormon Station during the upcoming master plan update. She said that even if it was rezoned, it would still have required the permit.
Resident Dan Aynesworth backed the proposal.
“I’m 110 percent in favor of this unbelievable historic project,” he said. “It’s a great addition to Genoa’s Mormon Station State Park.”
First opened after the construction of the fort in 1947, Mormon Station has doubled in size in the 21st Century with the addition of the 1.15-acre Campbell property in 2004 and now the Kinsey property. The park celebrates the founding of Nevada’s first permanent settlement and construction of the original fort by Reese in 1851. Nevada’s first structure burned in the 1910 Genoa fire.