Redfield: Reno’ eccentric millionaire

Many first-time visitors to Reno drive by the intersection of Mount Rose Street and Plumas Avenue and wonder what’s the story with the nearby big rock house.

Fortunately, a new book, “The Curious Life of Nevada’s LaVere Redfield: the Silver Dollar King,” by Jack Harpster, helps explain the fascinating and bizarre life of the man most associated with the stone mansion.

Redfield, who died in 1974, seemed to have been seriously interested in only a couple of things during his life — the acquisition of as much land as he could buy, purchasing and hoarding as many silver dollars as he could obtain, gambling and not paying taxes.

Born on Oct. 29, 1897 in Ogden, Utah, Redfield didn’t have much in his early life. His father died when he was young and his mother was forced to raise seven children alone.

He moved to Idaho as a young man and worked a variety of common jobs, including as a potato digger and in a department store, where married a co-worker (Nell).

In about 1921, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where Redfield became a securities broker. It was during this time that he began shrewdly buying and trading depressed and seemingly worthless stocks that he thought had a chance to rebound.

His investments proved particularly insightful and he truly hit the jackpot, earning his first millions, in the years immediately following the 1929 stock market crash when he paid pennies for serious depressed stocks no one wanted and later sold them when they became valuable.

By the early 1930s, he was buying real estate at tax sales as well as bankrupt oil companies.

In 1935, when California was considering the creation of a state income tax, Redfield decided to move to Reno, which had promoted itself as a shelter for the tax weary.

Shortly after arriving in Reno, he and his wife purchased the big stone home at 370 Mount Rose Street, which had originally been built in 1930 or 1931 by a family named Hill.

Redfield lived there until his death and his wife continued to live in the home until she died in 1981. Since then, family members have continued to reside in the mansion.

After Redfield settled in Reno he soon began purchasing land at tax sales, just as he had done in California, including huge tracts of land being sold by the Southern Pacific Railroad near Mount Rose and above Lake Tahoe. Eventually, he would own more than 55,000 acres in Washoe County.

Perhaps because he had seen so many banks close during the Depression, Redfield distrusted financial institutions and had little use for government. He abhorred paying income taxes so much that he attempted to hide his earnings.

However, in 1960, Redfield was convicted of tax evasion and went to jail for 18 months.

Additionally, perhaps because he grew up poor, he was unusually thrifty — he reportedly saved money by buying dented canned food at a discount and was often seen driving around town in an old pickup truck, dressed like a common farmer.

Additionally, because he didn’t want the government to know how much he was actually worth, he took to keeping large amounts of cash and coins in his home. In the 1940s, he began buying bags of uncirculated silver dollars (many minted at the former Carson City Mint) and stashing them in his house.

Over the years, Redfield’s primary hobby and vice was gambling. According to Harpster, he was a nearly nightly visitor to downtown Reno’s casinos for many years.

At the time of his death, executors found 680 bags of silver coins and 407,000 Morgan and Pierce silver dollars (351,259 of them un-circulated and still in original U.S. Mint bags; each bag held 1,000 coins) hidden in his 15-room stone mansion.

His net worth was estimated to be about $70 million.

Not surprisingly, rumors of his cash hoard circulated throughout the community — Reno was still a fairly small town in the 1950s and 60s — and in 1952, and again in 1963, his home was robbed and burglars made off with a portion of his coin cache.

In response, Redfield began hiding his silver dollars behind false walls in his basement.

Following Redfield’s death, once his estate had found all of the silver dollars, they sold them to a coin auction house, which gradually released them to collectors (they were sold over several years to prevent dumping too many on the collector market at one time).

In her later years, Nell Redfield became a well-respected philanthropist, donating part of her fortune to a number of local charities and helping to establish a community college branch in South Reno.

Additionally, in the past year, Redfield’s descendants have announced plans to develop the land surrounding the Redfield mansion into 14 bungalow-style houses on 2.23 acres.

No word if any of them will come with false basement walls.

Rich Moreno covers the places and people that make Nevada special.