Double Springs

Despite its peaceful name, this stop on the road to Esmeralda had a darker reputation as the Round Tent Ranch, or Sprague's. James Dean, an owner here and the district's justice of the peace, murdered his wife at the station in 1864. The Olds toll road connected the place to a nest of horse thieves operating to the south. Long before any of that, the springs drew the Washoe, who gathered nearby each spring and fall for round dances meant to bless the pine-nut harvest that sustained them. The site lies along the old emigrant road south of Gardnerville.

What the plaque says

Double Springs was the notorious Round Tent Ranch, or Spragues, another station on the road to Esmeralda. Here, James C. Dean, one of the owners and Justice of the Peace in the district in 1864, murdered his wife. This station was connected by the Olds Toll Road with the headquarters of the horse thieves at Fairview. This was also the place where the Washoe Indian tribe, assisted by their neighbors, the Paiutes, held round dances in the spring to assure the growth of the pine nut, their staple food, and again in the fall for the quality and quantity of the crop. About four miles north is Mammoth Ledge, post office of the Eagle Mining District, and the polling place in 1861 of the Mammoth precinct of Douglas County. After 1866, it was known as Carter's Station, a stopping place on the road to Esmeralda.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Genoa — 20 mi
  Nevada's oldest town—a California Trail trading post and Carson Valley ranch country that came eight years before the silver and quietly outlasted it
• Stewart Indian School — 24 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices
• Cave Rock / De'ek Wadapush — 26 mi
  One of the most sacred places of the Wašiw—the Standing Gray Rock, a worn volcano the highway was blasted through and climbers bolted for sport, now closed and quiet again after the Washoe's long fight to protect it
• Glenbrook & Spooner Summit — 27 mi
  Lake Tahoe's east shore, where the basin was logged nearly clean to timber the Comstock—the forest that paid for the silver, and the century it has spent growing back

More markers nearby

• Dresslerville — 9.6 mi
• Twelve Mile House — 9.7 mi
• Luther Canyon (Fay Canyon) — 12 mi
• Wellington — 13 mi