Officially known as the Dangberg Home Ranch Historic Park, Dangberg Ranch is a Douglas County park that preserves one of the Nevada’s first ranches. I can’t believe we’ve driven by this place countless times as we go to/from Carson City on US-395 and have never stopped!

When we enter the gate, we’re amazed by how many Red-tailed Hawks are hanging out in the fields. The photo at the bottom right below shows two Red-tailed Hawks in one photo! And I like the one at the upper left that I just manage to capture as it flies away – that gorgeous red tail!

The best of my Red-tailed Hawk photos at Dangberg Ranch:

European Starlings perched on a fence:

The Dangberg Ranch buildings with their backdrop of the cloud-covered Sierra Nevadas.

Cattle graze in the fields near the Dangberg Ranch buildings.

Dangberg Ranch has a very interesting history According to Wikipedia, it was “…founded in 1857 by Heinrich Friedrich Dangberg, Sr.[Dangberg built the ranch house, the first building on the ranch, in the early 1860s; a bunkhouse, cellar, and barn were added to the ranch in the 1870s. The ranch grew to 48,000 acres (19,000 ha) and became the largest in the Carson Valley. The H. F. Dangberg Land and Livestock Company formed to manage the ranch’s activities, which included ranching cattle, pigs, and horses, growing hay, and slaughtering both their own and other ranchers’ animals. In the 1900s, Dangberg’s son H. F. Dangberg, Jr., founded Minden on company land and commissioned most of its early buildings. A decade later, several more buildings were added to the ranch, including a slaughterhouse, cook’s quarters, two garages, and a main gate. The Dangberg Company prospered until the Great Depression and remained in business at the ranch until 1978.”

Many of the buildings are still present, making Dangberg Home Ranch Historic Park is an interesting place to walk around & explore. This is the original barn:

Here’s Mike standing in the brick gateway in front of the main ranch house.

We’re not able to go inside the ranch house today but Mark, a volunteer at the ranch, walks out to greet us as we wander around the grounds and he’s nice enough to unlock the Stone Cellar & the Laundry buildings. He leaves us to look around inside them as he gets back to his maintenance chores. Old farm equipment and carriages are on display near the parking area:

As we’re leaving Dangberg Ranch, I step out of the car to take photos (of a Bald Eagle, see below). I like the cute face of this young steer.

There’s a Bald Eagle perched at the top of a tree far away. Not the greatest photo – it’s very far away – but definitely a Bald Eagle!

It’s commonplace to see a Bald Eagle in Alaska but here, where they’re quite uncommon, it’s very exciting! We try to fix the location in our mind and then spend about half an hour driving around the neighborhood just behind the Carson Valley Swim Center to get a closer view, but no luck.