Jean, Nevada, is a small casino settlement (only a handful of people live there, so you can't really call it a town), 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas and 12 miles northeast of the California state line. It hugs both sides of I-15, with Nevada Landing Hotel-Casino on the westbound side, the Gold Strike Hotel-Casino eastbound; also found there are the Jean Conservation Camp (a minimum-security prison for women) and a Nevada Highway Patrol substation, which took over the Nevada Commission of Tourism's Welcome Center after it moved to Primm in 2000.
The first recorded activity around what would become Jean took place in 1904, when crews laid track through the area for the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad. Eastbound and westbound crews hooked up the railroad a few miles west of Jean, driving a golden spike and completing the railroad in December of that year.
Once the railroad was operational, ore from the lead and zinc mines in the area was hauled seven miles by wagon train from the refinery at the newly founded town of Goodsprings to the nearest point on the track, where it was loaded into waiting train cars. The loading point was named Jean by George Fayle, the most prominent businessman in Goodsprings, after his wife.
Goodsprings declined within 10 years (George Fayle was a victim of the 1918 flu pandemic and it went quickly downhill from there) and Jean went to seed; for more than 50 years, the only settlements in the neighborhood were a few scattered ranches. The next we hear of it, a small casino called Pop’s Oasis opened in 1972. The women’s prison opened in 1987. Pop’s closed in 1988. Nevada Landing opened in 1989 and the Gold Strike a year later.
In March 2007, MGM Mirage announced its intention to build a master-planned residential community on 166 acres it owns in Jean. The community will feature affordable single-family houses and condominium and apartment buildings, some of which are earmarked for MGM Mirage employees. A locals casino will open in the mixed-use development; shuttles to jobs in Las Vegas are also planned. No timeline or costs were announced for the project, but the company did say that Nevada Landing would close on April 18 and the Gold Strike would close "eventually," though the Gold Strike is currently being renovated and expanded.
But Nevada Landing didn’t last till April 18. It closed on March 20, a month earlier than planned, after the vast majority of the property’s 300 employees left to take new jobs at other MGM Mirage properties. Roughly 150 of them migrated across the freeway to the Gold Strike.
Nevada Landing still stands, shuttered; there’s been no word on when it will be torn down.
