Douglas County Records

Vital Source of Nevada History
So you can see, looking at the importance of Carson Valley and Genoa in Nevada’s quest for statehood, that Kinsey’s early records are among the area’s earliest official documents and a key part of Nevada’s history. Carson County, with its county seat in Genoa, comprised an area of more than 20,000 square miles, large enough for statehood anywhere east of the Mississippi.

It encompassed all of what later became the counties of Douglas, Lyon, Ormsby (Carson City), Storey, and parts of Washoe, Pershing, Churchill, Mineral, Esmeralda, and Nye, and extended as far as Honey Lake in California. When the counties were first created in 1861, recorders from all over the territory turned to Kinsey records to copy the original claims that then fell within their jurisdictions.

The original Genoa Courthouse burned to the ground in 1910, destroying many of the early records, but those remaining are vital to an understanding of the history of early Nevada.
