Rancho San Rafael: The Ranch That Became Reno's Backyard

Every September, Rancho San Rafael Regional Park fills before dawn with the Great Reno Balloon Race's crowds. The other eleven months, the 580-acre former cattle ranch north of the University of Nevada is something better: Reno's everyday backyard — a Washoe County park of pastures, gardens, wetlands and trails that lets the city remember it lives in a high-desert valley at the Sierra's foot.

The park's layers are the region's history in one property. The ranch pastures and the old ranch house recall the Truckee Meadows' agricultural era; the Wilbur D. May Center — museum and arboretum both — preserves the legacy of the Reno department-store heir and adventurer whose collections fill its galleries; the May Arboretum's gardens, from roses to native plantings, demonstrate what grows at 4,500 feet when it is loved properly. The park's wetlands and Herman's Pond anchor a bird list that changes with the seasons.

November is the park's reflective season: the cottonwoods and willows along Evans Creek turn and drop, wintering birds arrive on the ponds, and the trails along the old ditch lines carry runners and dog-walkers through the cold bright mornings. The off-leash dog area — one of the region's largest — runs its daily congress; the pasture fences hold the park's grazing tenants; and the Sierra crest stands over it all, collecting the winter's first serious snow.

Rancho San Rafael is also a working argument about what a region keeps. The ranch could have been subdivisions; the county and the May Foundation's stewardship made it a park instead, and its events calendar — from the balloon race to holiday light displays — makes it the closest thing Washoe County has to a shared front lawn.

Our outdoors desk will keep the ranch in the rotation: trail and garden conditions, museum exhibitions, and the seasons as they turn at 4,500 feet. In November, with the crest whitening and the park gone quiet and gold, it is the best walk in Reno.