Nevada Lore Series: Genoa's Hanging Tree, and Adam Uber's Dying Curse

The story of Adam Uber’s Curse, and Genoa’s Hanging Tree, begins in the fall of 1897. Adam Uber wasn’t exactly the Carson Valley’s darling sweetheart. In Genoa especially, he didn’t have a friend in the world.

In the Millerville Saloon, the story goes, town favorite Hans Anderson saw drifter Adam Uber alone at the bar, and decided he’d have some fun tormenting him. He went up to the bar, leaned close to him, and practically shouted that he was going to knock him around.

Then, he put his hands on Uber.

Uber, drunk as a skunk, jumped out of his bar stool, whipped out his pistol, and shot Hans dead.

Hans Anderson died on the barroom floor, and Uber was snatched up and thrown into the Genoa jailhouse to await his fate.

His fate, however, was to be a form of drunken vigilante justice by a mob of angry townsfolk.

Hans Anderson was well liked by everyone, and Adam Uber was, well, not. He was a drifter from Calaveras County, California. Hans Anderson, on the other hand, was a wildly popular 26-year-old Teamster, who was beloved by all.

At two o'clock in the morning, a week after the killing, and a day before Uber's trial was to begin, a drunken enraged mob rushed the jail.

The leader of the masked mob banged on the door, calling that there was a Gardnerville constable who had arrived with a prisoner who needed to be locked up.

There was no answer at the door, and after growing impatient, beat down the door to the recorder's office with a sledgehammer and forced their way in.

The sheriff and constable fought the mob, but were ultimately overpowered and held at gunpoint.

Adam Uber was awakened by the mob, and attempted to fight back using the only thing in his cell, a chair. But ultimately he was bound, gagged, and dragged through the streets.

Uber, wearing nothing but a shirt on that freezing November night, was marched half a mile to the hanging tree along with the Sheriff and Constable, still under gunpoint, who were being forced to watch the execution so they couldn't gather anyone to stop them, one can only assume.

A noose was fashioned and put around Uber's neck after they ripped the shirt from his body. They told him he had a minute to pray, but before the minute was up, the 25 masked men each pulled the rope, lifting him into the air.

Before the rope was tightened, however, Uber got out his final words.

He pledged that with his death a curse would befall each and every one of his faux-executioners, and the curse would follow through seven generations.

Uber was pulled high into the air by the branches of the hanging tree, and died. Adding insult to injury, several of the mob also shot at his body while he was hanging.

The rest of the state was horrified by the act of vigilante justice. Governor Reinhold Sadler offered a $500 reward, no small potatoes in 1897, for the arrest of those responsible for the lynching of Adam Uber.

No one, however, ever came forward, and no one was ever arrested for the crime.

This isn’t the end of Uber’s story however. Since he was the one that cursed the mob, naturally it would be his ghost in charge of seeking unearthly justice.

Some of the party died suddenly, without any sort of rhyme or reason. Others fell to their own hands in the years that followed. In a few cases, the deaths were brutal and horrific.

In one such case, one of the executioners was killed in a freak runaway horse incident, and he died below the very tree Adam Uber had taken his last breath in.

Each one of the townsfolk involved met untimely ends, and the curse followed their family members as well. Fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, children; no one was safe from the curse, and bad luck followed them throughout the generations.

Genoa’s Hanging Tree is still standing today, and spooky historical walks are led to it throughout the summer and fall from the town of Genoa.

The tree stands in a cluster of cottonwoods on the southern side of Genoa Lane, east of Genoa.

The story continues, as Uber is still spotted from time to time, either beside his fateful tree, or in the cell at the old brick courthouse he had been dragged from. Some say his soul can’t rest until his curse has been completed, and the relatives of those who stole his life still live.

Could you be one of them?

— The Nevada Lore Series focuses on the legends of Nevada and the surrounding areas that help build our culture, from ancient Washoe stories, to Old West ghostly visions, to modern day urban legends.

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