Donna's Battle Mountain Ranch
Donna's Ranch is a legal, licensed brothel located in Nevada. Donna's Ranch has two locations, one in Battle Mountain, Nevada in Lander County , at 395 North 2nd Street, and one in Wells, Nevada, in Elko County, on 8th Street. The ranch traces its history back to 1870 and is owned by Geoff Arnold.
History
Previously the The Calico Club, Donna's Calico Club, and Chardon's Club.
- They Weren't Working on the Railroad
Ancient Greek philosophers pondered the essence of the world and debated whether the "first principle" or "arche" of nature was air, earth, fire or water. At Donna's Ranch our customers have it figured out: they arrive by earth or by air, drink the firewater and prove that what makes the world go around is "libido" or "sexual drive".
Actually, the Greek philosopher Thales (634 - 546 BC) got it the closest because he considered WATER to be the first principle of nature. And so it goes with many of the locations in the Old West that the history of an area boils down to WATER.
Donna's Ranch is located in Northeastern Nevada in Elko County. Elko County is a very large county, 17,135 square miles, about the combined size of Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island or a little smaller than the combination of New Hampshire and Vermont.
When the intercontinental railroads were constructed, they were built along the same pathways the wagon trains used to make the dusty trip to the West Coast. This route is now Interstate 80...Denver to Cheyenne to Salt Lake City across Northern Nevada to Reno, then over the Donner Pass through the Sierra Nevada mountains, down into Sacramento and westward to San Francisco. The railroads were completed when Interstate 80 was still a wagon trail.
Donna's Ranch is located at the headwaters of the Humboldt River. Here we have a very high water table. It's only down about 4 or 5 feet from the surface of the ground. When the railroads came through, they located a watering station here for their steam locomotives.
The railroad runs by Donna's less than 100 yards to the South. (We are of course on the "wrong side of the tracks.")
Also, on land now owned by Donna's in a flat damp sage brush area west of our parking lot was located a Chinese man camp. Most people know that the early railroads were built by hardworking laborers under almost slave labor conditions. Ninety percent of the workers on the Union Pacific were Chinese. They were available as laborers because they came to mine search for gold, but when they arrived, the folks who were already there passed a law that made it illegal for the Chinese to prospect for or mine gold.
The time was right after the Civil War, as the Golden Spike was driven when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads met at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869.
Nevada became a state on Halloween in 1864. The Comstock Lode was a massive silver deposit discovered in the hills southeast of Reno in Virginia City in 1859. Nevada was admitted to the Union primarily because the silver from the Comstock Lode was needed to finance the Civil War effort for the North.
So Donna's started along with the railroads, and it has always had a symbiotic connection with the railroads. Our building has two sections which were originally railroad structures converted to use as part of the famous cat house. From looking at the structure of Donna's buildings, it looks like the place grew in a fairly disorganized fashion in about 5 stages. The oldest section of the house is about three small rooms with very thick adobe-like walls and a low ceiling. Believe me, they look 100 years old! The rooms are now used as a beer storage room and a pantry off of the kitchen. But originally the old rooms were used for "more than working on the railroad." In a proud and ancient tradition, you could say that the ladies of the late 19th century helped build a nation by caring for the golden spikes that built a railroad and linked a nation together from sea to shining sea.
From the 1870's until about the 1970's the economy of Northern Nevada was essentially the same. It was cowboy country! Large ranches and cattle stretched for miles. There was some mining and transportation with Highway 40 and the two railroads (Southern Pacific and Union Pacific.) There was also tourism and local government. Being a high desert plateau, the area still has a unique kind of beauty, an almost endless openness and phenomenally beautiful skies.
With the discovery of large gold reserves on what is known as the "Carlin Trend" by Carlin Gold, now a part of Newmont Mining Company, the economy is now dominated by mining. The mining companies pay very well, and the area has prospered. Although there are more people and the overall character has changed somewhat, it is still a rough and tumble society with a refreshing "live and let live" attitude. It's still an area where folks can live life and enjoy nature without being hassled by some of the more restrictive norms prevalent in more developed parts of the country.
Sometime later, Donna's was expanded, adding the area which is now the kitchen and the bar, the office and a couple more rooms. This area is of normal frame construction.
In about 1967, the railroad passenger station was decommissioned. Two thirds of the building was moved to Donna's and the other third was moved about 10 miles to an RV park. The railroad building added what is now a bathroom, three girl's rooms, a manager's apartment, a photo studio, storage and a laundry room. Somewhere along the line two trailers and a garage were added. Various roofs were built over the combined facilities, and now trying to figure out where roof leaks might be coming from requires a rocket scientist.
Contact info
Donna's Ranch can be contacted any time, at 775-752-9959. You can also email at donnasranch1869@gmail.com, or check out Official Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/OfficialDonnasRanch
See also
External links
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