Dangberg has been a name that has been mentioned quite a bit since moving to Tahoe.  Today, the beautiful weather was the catalyst for us to take a drive 'off the hill' and we found ourselves in the delightful Nevada town that Mr. Dangberg built- Minden.

We learned a great deal  from Discover Minden:  A Walking Tour.  In 1905, H. F. (Henry Fred) Dangberg, Jr.,  began to cultivate his vision for a new town—a planned community in the heart of the valley, just north of the established town of Gardnerville.  Fred and his three brothers, John, George, and Clarence, had created the H. F. Dangberg Land and Livestock Company with their father before his death in 1904.

Clarence eventually sold his interest back to the company and established the C. O. D. (Clarence Oliver Dangberg) Garage, one of Minden’s earliest businesses and the one that made us feel as if time stood still (1911).

Built in 1908, the original Minden Butter Manufacturing Company building was made of wood.  Cream from local farms was brought here and placed in one of two 600-gallon vats, then processed into butter.  By 1915, the facility was producing 3,000 pounds of butter a day.  The larger brick facility was built in 1916 to accommodate the new pasteurization process that was mandated by California law.  This is one of my favorite buildings in town.  There is something about the permanency of the name in the brickwork.

One could spend an entire day here due to the fact that most of the homes and buildings have historical plaques describing them.  A.F. Neidt (1911) build this mostly cement house which made perfect sense being as he was the town's cement contractor.  Most of the early sidewalks are his as well.

The Minden Flour Milling Company sits right on 395 and every time we drive by, I'm in awe!  Built for the Dangberg company, the mill consists of two sections: a three-story brick mill building with a gable roof and stepped parapet gable end walls and a cluster of four 45-foot-high steel silos covered by a sheet-metal gable roof. A three-and-one-half-story corrugated sheet-metal enclosure connects the silos to the mill building. One-story additions on the south and east sides of the brick structure were completed in 1908. Despite its utilitarian style, the mill has refined touches, including pilaster strips separating the walls into bays. The oldest and most prominent of the three structures in the complex, the mill has a striking appearance, towering over U.S. 395. During the first decade of Minden's existence, it was the tallest building in town. It is now the only remaining flour mill of five that were built in the Carson Valley from 1854 to 1906. These structures played an important role in early Nevada, not only providing flour for emigrants heading west but also helping settlers to establish a local milling industry.  -Julie Nicoletta