Big Meadows Ranch House
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Marzen House (Big Meadows Ranch House)
1875, 1981. 25 Marzen Lane
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(Photograph by Julie Nicoletta)
This large two-story house is one of the oldest remaining from Lovelock's early ranching period. Joseph Marzen, a German immigrant, worked as a butcher in Virginia City and Reno during the 1860s. In the 1870s he arrived in the Lovelock area, where he established himself as a cattle breeder and rancher. The house he built functioned as the center of a prosperous ranch encompassing over 3,500 acres at the turn of the century. The five-by-two-bay woodframe house has a hipped roof with eaves decorated with pairs of elaborately scrolled brackets. The window surrounds, corner boards, and porch supports also have ornate jigsawn cutouts. The main entrance contains ornate double doors with a transom above, and the symmetrical floor plan has a central hallway running the length of the house, with four large rooms on each floor.
Although the house has been altered little over the years, it no longer stands on its original rural site. In 1981 the county moved it to a lot at the edge of Lovelock, near a freeway on-ramp, where it now serves as the Pershing County Museum.
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