The Winters Ranch

Theodore Winters built this Gothic Revival ranch house in 1864 and made it the seat of a Nevada sporting dynasty. Winters made his money as a Comstock mining investor, then poured it into land, politics, and above all racehorses—breeding thoroughbreds whose names were known on tracks across the West from his Washoe Valley stables. The graceful pointed-gable house stood among the finest country homes in the region. The ranch outlasted many of the valley's vanished mill towns. The marker recalls Winters, whose horses and house gave Washoe Valley a touch of turf-world glamour amid the mining country.

What the plaque says

Rancho del Sierra. This large carpenter-gothic style structure, completed about 1864, was the ranch home of Theodore and Maggie Winters and their seven children. Originally this area was settled by Mormons, and the ranch was purchased from Mormons by Winters and his brother, from the proceeds of the Comstock. Theodore Winters immediately set out to enlarge his property and built the mansion you see. The ranch, at one time, consisted of around 6,000 acres. Winters raised outstanding race horses; raced them here. He also had a large dairy operation; raised beef cattle, work horses and sheep. Theodore Winters was active in politics, being elected territorial representative in 1862.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chollar Mine — 9.2 mi
  A real Comstock silver mine you can still walk into—four hundred feet of original timbered tunnel under C Street, where the work that built a state was done by hand, in the dark
• Virginia City — 9.3 mi
  The boomtown that sits on top of the richest silver strike in America—fewer than a thousand people now, on streets built for twenty-five thousand
• Sand Harbor — 9.7 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
• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 10 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

More markers nearby

• Bowers Mansion — 2.0 mi
• Franktown — 2.9 mi
• Galena Creek Fish Hatchery — 3.5 mi
• Galena — 3.6 mi