Restoring the River: A Dayton Community Effort

A major restoration effort is reshaping the landscape along the Carson River in Dayton – and strengthening the community partnerships behind it. Dayton Valley Conservation District (DVCD) and Central Lyon Fire have spent months working side-by-side to stabilize eroding riverbanks, reduce fire hazards, and bring native vegetation back to life.

The first major project was to clear and reshape 2,000 linear feet of riverbank within the Ricci Ranch and Pradere Ranch corridor between Dayton Valley Road and the Santa Maria Ranch community. Together, DVCD and Fire teams transformed an unstable, overhanging 1-to-1 slope into a safe and sustainable 3-to-1 slope, removing noxious weeds, planting 3,500 willows and placing thousands of large rocks to stabilize and strengthen the riverbank. The goal is to restore healthier, more resilient habitat for generations to come.

“As the river rises in the winter, sediment will deposit in it, more willows and other plant species will establish between the rocks, with the rocks there to help hold the bank together,” said DVCD District Manager Austin Lemons.

With riverbank construction nearly finished, the teams have now shifted their focus to another joint project in Dayton’s Rolling A Recreational Open Space.

After a controlled burn in January 2025, Central Lyon Fire Fuels Reduction Crew saw just how aggressively noxious weeds – especially tall Whitetop – were taking hold. The weeds were crowding out native plants and dramatically increasing future fire danger. In response, the department applied for and received a Nevada Fire Chiefs Association Risk Reduction grant to address the wildfire threat in the Rolling A cottonwood forest and riparian area.

“We partnered with the Conservation District to also remove all the Whitetop,” said Central Lyon Fire Fuels Reduction Division Chief Shane Nollsch. “We’re doing the removal – we’re mowing all the Whitetop and the noxious species – then hopefully in the Spring, Austin [Lemons] will be able to come in and actually place an herbicide that will keep it knocked down.”

The 126-plus acre Rolling A project is funded through a mix of federal and state grants awarded in 2022, but securing the necessary permits from numerous agencies took years. After extensive planning and approvals, crews finally broke ground this fall, with full completion anticipated by June 2026, if not sooner.

Nollsch emphasized how broad the collaboration has been. “We’ve got the sheriff’s department that will be involved with helping us when we go to chip … Lyon County has been huge, the parks department, the roads department … so it’s a really, really good partnership for the whole community, which is really nice.”

Both DVCD and Central Lyon Fire are committed to reusing and repurposing materials from the project wherever possible.

“Some is going back on the ground as biomat,” Nollsch noted, “but the majority of it we’re actually giving to Community Roots, we’re gonna donate a whole bunch of the wood chips to them so they can use it for landscaping purposes… So this is a good way to get back.”

From riverbank stabilization to fire mitigation and habitat restoration, DVCD and Central Lyon Fire are making steady progress toward a healthier Carson River corridor—reminding us that conservation is truly a community effort.