Brushed metal plaque № 48977

Gardner’s Ranch. On this site in the period from 1870 until 1918 stood the ornate two-story home of Matthew Culbertson Gardner, rancher and lumberman.  The residence was headquarters for Gardner’s 300-acre ranch in the meadows to the southward.Here was located, 1870 to 1898, the Carson-Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company large lumberyard here.

  During the 1870s and 1880s, Gardner logged south of Lake Tahoe for the company and built the only standard gauge logging railroad in the Tahoe Basin. He maintained his home here.Gardner died in 1908.  The residence was destroyed by a fire August 20, 1918.  Many of the old trees on the ground once shaded the Gardner family.