By Ed Vogel, Las Vegas Review-Journal

Douglas County must be the best-kept secret in Nevada.

Lying just south of Carson City, here one finds the lush, green, 20-mile long Carson Valley dotted with ranches covered by grazing cattle. And 1,400 feet above the valley floor lies the southern half of Lake Tahoe, with some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.

View of the Sierra from Genoa. Photo/LTN file

This is where Nevada’s first Anglo residents settled in 1851 — although that was about 9,000 years after the Washoe Indians arrived to live a nomadic life of gathering pine nuts and hunting rabbits in Carson Valley, except for fishing and summering at Lake Tahoe. They knew a good place when they saw it.

But outsiders slowly are discovering this place of clean air and beauty. Until the Great Recession five years ago, wealthy California retirees — like the late Bing Crosby’s wife Kathy — were buying ranches near pricey Genoa. Ever hear of Friesian horses, the horse used in European wars? There are ranches here full of the beautiful and costly black horses.

Others were purchasing multimillion-dollar homes at Lake Tahoe and in the pine forests on the west side of Carson Valley. The boom brought skyrocketing land and home prices that priced many people, particularly those with children, out of Douglas County.

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