HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Nevada's oldest standing courthouse, completed in 1865, preserving the original courtroom and a tin jail cell
2304 Main Street, Genoa, NV 89411
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Modest museum admission, with reduced rates for children; the museum is seasonal, typically open May through October. Confirm hours and fees with the Douglas County Historical Society.
Access
Limited Access
Historic two-story brick building with stairs to the second-floor courtroom; ground floor more accessible.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1865 · Oldest standing courthouse in Nevada · Douglas County seat until 1916 · Carson Valley regional history museum
In 1864 the Nevada territorial legislature authorized Douglas County to raise taxes for a courthouse in Genoa, then the county seat and Nevada's first permanent non-native settlement. The county commissioned T. J. Furbee, a local mining superintendent, to design the building, and contractors Lawrence Gilman and Rufus Adams completed it in 1865 for less than $20,000.
The result is a rectangular two-story brick building on a stone foundation, with transoms and sidelights framing a centered doorway beneath a denticulated cornice. The second floor holds the courtroom and offices; at the back of the first floor sits a tin jail cell, little more than a two-compartment metal box. It is the oldest courthouse still standing in the state.
When the Douglas County seat moved to Minden in 1916, the courthouse was converted into a school and served local children for decades. More than a century after construction, in 1969, the Douglas County Historical Society spearheaded its conversion into the Genoa Courthouse Museum.
The museum interprets the broader history of the Carson Valley, with exhibits on the Washoe people, the Emigrant Trail, the Pony Express, and John "Snowshoe" Thompson, who carried mail on skis over the Sierra Nevada between Genoa and Placerville, California. The preserved courtroom and jail anchor the collection.
Sources
The courthouse's ghost story is tied to one of the darkest episodes in Genoa's history. In the fall of 1897, Adam Uber, a drifter, shot and killed Hans Anderson, a well-liked young teamster, during an altercation at a Genoa saloon. About a week later, the night before Uber's trial, a masked mob of roughly 25 men overpowered the sheriff and constable, took Uber from the jail, and lynched him at a cottonwood on the edge of town. Governor Reinhold Sadler offered a reward, but no one was ever charged.
Local lore holds that Uber's spirit lingers, and Carson Valley ghost accounts say he is sometimes reported at the courthouse jail cell where he was held, or at the base of the hanging tree on Genoa Lane. The story is bound up with a related curse legend that attached to the mob members in the years after.
The museum treats this history as exactly that, a documented and troubling chapter of frontier justice rather than a thrill. Visitors interested in the case can stand in the small tin cell that held Uber and connect the building to the events that gave it its haunted reputation.
Notable Entities
The museum occupies the 1865 courthouse and preserves the second-story courtroom, county offices, and a tin jail cell on the first floor. Exhibits cover the Washoe people, the Emigrant Trail, the Pony Express, and Snowshoe Thompson, the legendary cross-Sierra mail carrier. Visitors can stand in the room where 19th-century Douglas County justice was administered.
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