We are expecting that big truck to roll into Gold Hill with 4,000 copies in time for its official Nevada Day publication date. The cover of the new edition (the 12th or 13th — I’ve lost track — since the first one in 1976) features a photograph of the Santa Fe Saloon in Goldfield by Max Winthrop, Nevada’s leading blind photographer. Like our website, the book provides current travel information and historical background about all Nevada’s towns and cities. This edition will bring total copies in print to something over 85,000 (I’ve lost track of that too). If you’re in Carson City for the Nevada Day Parade, stop in at the Great Basin Gallery, Curry and 2nd Streets, to celebrate the new edition and lay eyes on some wonderful Nevada art.
We can now take your orders online for Personal copies and gifts or for Resale
Within the daily torrent of e-mail requests for information came one from a traveler driving east from California to Wyoming (or was it Montana? — one of those eastern states, anyhow) wanting a place to board her horses overnight in Wendover. A flurry of e-mails across northeastern Nevada brought a response from the City of West Wendover with directions to the City Corral, where the equines passed a peaceful night and their chauffeur went out and had some fun.
And speaking of Wendover, it’s the hottest place in Nevada just now and we are not talking temperature here. Officially West Wendover, the little city on the Nevada side of the line has grown to be a bright spot in northeast Nevada and a major
contributor of jobs and tax revenues in Elko County. The local folks are so enthusiastic about the power of the ballot box that in between their elections they have recall elections. Wendover Utah, meanwhile, grew by providing low-rent housing for the low-pay employees at the Nevada-side casinos. The Nevada city had actually begun the process of absorbing its rickety neighbor, Wendover Utah, and bureaucrats on both sides were scratching their heads over how to redraw the state boundary line when the bankruptcy of the Smith family properties, the Silver Smith and State Line casino hotels, put everything else in the shade.
Their troubles date back to a failed marketing strategy whereby these properties focused their marketing efforts on the national Fly-In Junket trade, using the old Air Force Base as its landing field. The blocks of rooms for these fly-in visitors meant their established Utah customers had to stay elsewhere — at the arch-rival Peppermill for example.
But the junketeers didn’t produce enough revenue and the flights were ended. When their Utah customers were slow to come back, the casinos were in trouble. In January they entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
In May the Peppermill offered $50 million for the properties, but when the Federal Trade Commission announced a formal investigation the Peppermill offer was withdrawn. Up stepped Isle of Capri Resorts, a national casino operating company headquartered in Mississippi to make a new $30 million offer for the hotels. As all that was going on, and the city worried about the devastating effect that closing the properties would have, three new casino projects are in the works. One of them, The Keys, has already been approved for a Three Mile Hill location.
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