History:

In June of 1849, H.S. Beatie and his party camped at a location now known as Genoa. They learned from traders passing by their camp that a heavy emigration was expected through the area. So Beatie and his men got busy and built a two room, double logged, one story house, 20 X 60 feet, without floor or roof. They also built a corral for their animals. Beatie and Abner Blackburn crossed the mountains into California with an extra 3 yoke of cattle to sell or trade for supplies they intended to sell to immigrants passing by their trading post. They brought back flour, dried fruit, bacon, sugar and coffee to the post, although their principal trade was in horses and mules.

Remembering the April 1846 Donner Party tragedy, Beatie and his party did not want to chance the winter in the Valley so they abandoned their trading post in September and returned to Salt Lake City where Beatie clerked in the J. & E. Reese Mercantile.

The first permanent settlement was established in the spring of 1851 by Colonel John Reese, a Mormon, who planned to open a trading post on the overland trail. He was a partner with his brother Enoch in the J. & E. Reese Mercantile firm at Salt Lake City. The party arrived in Carson Valley with 13 wagons loaded with eggs, bacon, flour, seed grain and other kinds of seeds. Stephen A. Kinsey, Reese's nephew, acted as guide. Kinsey stopped for a time at a place on the Carson River called Ragtown. This point did not seem favorable so he moved up the river into one of the most fertile of valleys. On July 4, 1851, Kinsey waited for his party at Beatie's old trading post.

On November 12, 1851, the settlers formed and organized a settler's or squatter's government. It was impossible to settle a legal matter or send records back to Salt Lake City, 500 miles away because Indians, bandits, thieves and desperados took advantage of riders on the trail. The settlers adopted rules for taking up land and elected John Reese recorder and treasurer. Reese recorded the first claim for himself in December of 1852 in the new Utah Territory settlement he named Mormon Station (Genoa).