Rinckel Mansion

Mathias Rinckel made his money in meat. A German immigrant who tried the California and Comstock gold fields, he settled in Carson City in 1863 and built a livestock and butchering business that supplied the surrounding mining and timber camps. In 1876 his wealth raised this house, a French-schooled designer's High Victorian Italianate showpiece of pressed brick on a prison-sandstone foundation, finished by European craftsmen. It stands among the finest preserved homes of its style in the West. His widow Marcella, active in the women's suffrage movement, lived here until 1933; it now houses the Nevada Press Association.

What the plaque says

Completed in 1876, this palatial residence represents one of the finest and best preserved examples of High Victorian Italianate architecture remaining in the American West. Charles H. Jones, a French-schooled designer, constructed the residence for Mathias Rinckel using European craftsmen. The mansion is constructed of pressed brick resting upon sandstone ashlar foundation. The sandstone originated from the Nevada State Prison quarry. The brick came from Carson Valley and knot-free lumber was obtained from the pine forests of Lake Tahoe. Rinckel, a German immigrant and pioneer Carson City merchant, accumulated a degree of wealth in the gold fields in the Feather River district of California from 1849 to 1859. He increased his fortune in mining at Virginia City during that city’s infancy. In 1863, Rinckel settled in Carson City, where he engaged in livestock and butchering. As a successful merchant, he supplied mining and timber districts surrounding Eagle Valley with meat. State Historic Marker No. 252 Division of Historic Preservation and Archeology.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson City — steps away
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since
• Stewart Indian School — 3.3 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
• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 7.2 mi
  The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides
• Sand Harbor — 9.0 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

More markers nearby

• Carson City — steps away
• Methodist Church of Carson City — steps away
• Nevada’s Capital — steps away
• Stewart – Nye Residence — steps away