“Territory is but the body of a nation.
The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.
In them dwells its hope of immortality.“
– President James A. Garfield

“Mormon Station” is located in the town of Genoa, at the edge of the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains in Nevada.  The station was built in 1851 as a trading and supply post along the Carson Route to California, and the town grew around station. The town is known as Nevada’s first permanent, non-native settlement.

Both the station and the town of Genoa were established by “Mormon” pioneers, or members of the “Latter Day Saints” religious and cultural movement, who had originally settled in what was the Mexican territory of Alta California. But at the formal conclusion of the Mexican-American War in early February of 1848, Mexico ceded its territories in the present day southwestern United States.

In late January of 1848, however, gold had been found at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, not far from the town of Placerville (aka “Hangtown”) in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. This discovery would ultimately bring around 300,000 new immigrants to California, many of whom would need to cross the Sierras after traveling from the eastern United States on horseback or by wagon. This placed an immediate pressure on the United States to consolidate its new land claims to the west.

In 1849, leaders of the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (“LDS Church”) based in what is today the state of Utah, proposed that much of this new southwestern US territory be included in a new state of “Deseret”. A provisional state government was established by church leaders, but it was never officially recognized by the United States. Instead, the “Utah Territory” was created in 1850 by an act-of-Congress. 

This new territory respected a southern boundary based in the Missouri Compromise, and a western border with the newly established state of California. Extending from the Rocky Mountains on the east, it traversed present day Utah to the still unsurveyed California border in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the west.

Brigham Young, the leader of the Mormon movement, was inaugurated as the first governor of the Utah Territory. And in 1851, a Mormon settler named John Reese brought horses, cattle, and twelve wagon-loads of supplies with the intent of establishing a permanent trading post near the new territory’s western boundary.

Within a year, the settlement around the trading post had expanded into a full-fledged town, complete with sawmills, a blacksmith, and even a U.S. Post Office. And despite a Mormon tenet to abstain from alcohol, in 1853 the town also became host to Nevada’s oldest drinking establishment. In 1856, an official from the LDS Church, Orson Hyde, arrived to survey and record the area’s lands, and officially named the town “Genoa” on maps, after the Italian city.

Travelers preparing to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains via routes to the south of Lake Tahoe could stop at Mormon Station to acquire items such as clothing, dried beef and bacon, beans, flour and sugar, as well as tobacco and coffee. The original trading post stood until 1910, when it was burned in a fire that swept through much of the town. However, the Kinsey House, which was built on the grounds in 1856 survived, and remains as one of Nevada’s oldest original residences.

Between 1856 and 1876, the US Post Office at Genoa was also the eastern stop for “Snowshoe Thompson” (Jon Albert Thompson, born Jon Torsteinsson Rue), who carried mail across the Sierras, year-round, between Placerville and Genoa. Despite his nickname, Thompson actually used Norwegian back-country styled, ten-foot (3-meter) skis, with a single pole during his winter passages. Over his twenty years of carrying mail, Thompson was never actually paid by the US government for his services as a postal contractor.

Present day Mormon Station is a reconstruction built in 1947, and transferred to the Nevada Division of Parks in 1957. The main building is used as a museum, with various larger items also displayed within the stockade grounds. The surrounding area also includes a park shaded by many large trees. The adjacent town of Genoa is also host to the annual “Candy Dance”, a popular regional event first started to help raise funds for reconstruction after the 1910 fire.

Central Genoa is today little more than Mormon Station, a small collection of eateries, stores and shops, and a few older residences. Most of the town’s current population of about a thousand people is spread along the main road to the north of the town. Since the post-Covid California exodus, the area has been host to much upscale residential development. From a supply stop for weary travelers, Genoa has become a destination in itself.