Andorno Ranch comprises 320 acres near the farming and ranching community of Orovada, thirty-six miles north of Winnemucca. Situated along the old Idaho Trail, roughly paralleled today by U.S. 95, the complex originally served as a stage station. Its builder and first owner, Alfonso Pasquale, capitalized on the mule trains bringing hay and produce south into Winnemucca and carrying finished goods to the northern ranches. (The modern highway now runs one-tenth of one mile southeast of the site.) The property also functioned as a ranch, producing hundreds of tons of hay each year. The complex is significant not only as a well-preserved example of turn-of-the-century vernacular ranch architecture but also for its examples of Italian stonemasonry. Italian immigrants moved into the Paradise Valley and Orovada areas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and some of their buildings remain in the region. Many of these have regular- or random-coursed granite or sandstone walls with hipped roofs.