Time stands still at the Marzen Museum. In a photo near the entrance of his 145 year old home, Colonel Joseph Marzen (1828-1916) gazes sideways. He sports Mason regalia and a serious mustache.
On Wednesday, May 1, the museum commenced its new season. It’s open Tuesday through Sunday from 1:30 until 4 p.m. through Sept. 31.
Curator Bill Snodgrass answers questions and points out the house’s treasures. The museum charges no admission but accepts donations.
The two-story building once stood surrounded by Marzen’s cattle on Big Meadows Ranch west of Lovelock. Generations later, in 1980, Walter and Viola Brinkerhoff bought the ranch and donated Marzen’s residence to Lovelock for use as a museum.
Shortly after, the City of Lovelock moved Marzen House one and a half miles to its current site. Over the years, the citizenry stuffed it with photographs and mementos. They also cared for and restored the building – as evidenced by its 1981 inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.
Today, the eyes of dozens of porcelain dolls watch visitors as they wander the rooms. In one room, white cotton dresses as delicate as baby’s breath hang from the wall.
In the hallway, a switchboard machine’s wires, once buzzing with conversation, dangle in perpetual silence.
A poster of Sarah Winnemucca welcomes visitors to an exhibit dedicated to the Lovelock Cave, the prehistoric rock shelter twenty miles southeast of town.
The staircase to the top story swirls past framed portraits. George Lovelock (1824-1907) reads to a little girl in a wide brimmed hat. A doll rests in the crook of his arm as a hound relaxes under the chair.
Upstairs, a claw foot tub from Rochester Boarding House beckons, a bargain at fifty cents per soak.
Kitchenware includes a hand-operated bread slicer from Unionville Bakery, in business from 1862-1880.
In an outside building, Coeur Rochester displays part of its history. The mining town of Rochester boomed and busted within the blink of an eye. But Dale Darney’s three-dimensional model brings it to life.
Visitors to the Coeur exhibit walk away with an appreciation of “the youngest, richest and best mining town in Nevada,” now vanished.
For good measure, Webb Varnum, a Nevada geologist, threw in a collection of trilobites, ammonites, fossilized turtle eggs and shark’s teeth. The rockhound and world traveler recently donated his lifetime collection of over 250 fossils to the museum.
Exhausted firefighters once rode the red Ford firetruck that sits in the garage, retired. Mining towns frequently erupted in flames.
Last summer the Winnemucca BLM, Southern Nevada Conservancy and Rye Patch Gold teamed up with Marzen House. They installed outdoor kiosks about the California Trail and Panama, a short-lived but colorful mining town.
Colonel Marzen was not the only builder to leave his mark. Andrew Humboldt Scott (1890-1967) constructed his two-room assay office in Rochester during its boom years, between 1912 and 1915.
When the bust came, Scotty hitched up his horses and hauled the building to a new location - behind a bank and near a train depot. He hung a shingle over his door that said “Lovelock Assay Office.”
For the next four decades he lived nearby with his wife, Lalla McIntosh Scott. While Scotty assayed, Lalla befriended Annie Lowry, a Paiute woman.
Lalla Scott wrote about Lowry’s life at the crossroads of two civilizations, one eclipsing the other. Karnee: A Paiute Narrative is available at the museum and at the Pershing County library.
The townspeople moved Scotty’s assay office to the museum grounds in the early nineteen-nineties. Visitors report feeling as if Scotty could walk in any moment to heat up a can of beans or perform the art and science of fire assay.
Once, Scotty tried to explain his love for the desert to a visitor from a lusher land. He and his friend stood on the floor of what was once Lake Lahontan.
Scotty reached down and scooped up a chunk of white float. He handed it to his friend.
“All that’s left are these skeletons,” said Scotty as he spoke about the diatoms, two-celled organisms that once thrived in the ancient lake.
“Be careful,” he added. “You can fall in love with the mountains and seas, and it’ll pass. But if you fall in love with the desert, you’re lost. You’ll never get over it.”
The Marzen Museum is located on 25 Marzen Lane in Lovelock. For more information call 273-4909.
