First Nail Driven in the Reconstruction of the 1880 Carson & Colorado RR Depot

A large group of Nevada history buffs gathered at the corner of Old Town Dayton’s Main Street and U.S. 50 West on Saturday, May 16 to celebrate the beginning of the reconstruction of the town’s beloved Carson & Colorado RR Depot that burned to the ground on June 20, 2020, at the hands of an arsonist.

Emceeing the event, Chairperson of the Historical Society of Dayton Valley’s Depot Reconstruction Committee Linda Clements introduced David Bates with Bates Construction, the Dayton contractor who won the bid to do the reconstruction work. To add to the fun, HSDV committee member Stony Tennant, who assisted with the engineering of the project, provided a long piece of old wood and square nails from the old depot so those attending had a chance to drive a nail into it. Tennant asked the “nail drivers” to write their names in a booklet, noting those names will be placed alongside the nailed timber inside the new depot’s museum when it opens.

Going back in time, HSDV members of the Depot reconstruction project Linda Clements, John Crowley, and Stony Tennant constantly worked with reconstruction building specialists to get the job done – all in all, it took much longer than they expected. One of the specialists, Toby Engineering, developed the drawings of the original depot for insurance purposes. Lyon County owned and insured the building. Tennant explained a few of the reasons that the reconstruction project took years to get to this point:

“We had to develop the first set of blueprints for the insurance company since they had to assess the value of the building before it burned and it took them two years to get the drawings. The building’s value was established from the drawings they produced and they had to produce drawings engineered to pass modern codes, but because the building was being rebuilt to its historic standards, we had difficulty finding an engineer who could do that design along with the engineering on the post and beam type of construction of the original building to retain it’s original character."

Through much research and investigation, John Crowley located Alpen Engineering in Truckee, owned by Paul Laudenschlager. Alpen Engineering specializes in timber framing design for open-beam construction for mountain resort lodges throughout the Northwest. Alpen Engineering worked hand-in-hand with Crom Engineering in Reno and HSDV to develop the reconstruction plans.

The new plans were designed to reconstruct the building as closely as possible to the original structure. All modern construction materials require bringing the old building to modern standards for wind and snow loads, but were designed to be concealed so the character of the building would be maintained. All lumber was to be rough sawn, full dimension, to match the original lumber. All exposed nailing will be done with square nails to match the original construction. All finished walls in the passenger section is custom prepared to match the original beadboard and crown molding. All lumber will be chemically aged to match the appearance of the original. Paint chips from the original building have been analyzed to match the colors of the original.

All efforts were made to return  the appearance of character of the new building to its 1880 configuration, even to the respect of not having any utility connections (no water, sewer or power) because the original building had none. Central Lyon County Fire also agreed to variances to retain the historic character and waived modern code requirements for lighting, exit doors, exit signs, etc. that would be required in a modern commercial building because it was less than 2,000 square feet, not be occupied, used only during daylight hours, and open only on special occasions as a museum building representing 1880 era.

Tennant pointed out that HSDV President Linda Clements has set up a plan to photograph the complete reconstruction process to preserve the process for posterity.