Peter McIntyre was a cantankerous old miner who opened a ramshackle and remote gas station on Highway 91 at the Nevada-California state line, 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas, in the 1920s. He did sell gasoline, but there was so little traffic that he supplemented his income by operating a whiskey still, rumored to be in a cave across the road from the gas station. Pete was hard to miss in his 10-gallon hat, with two six-shooters strapped around his waist. It's said that he subtly advertised his illegal wares with the name Whiskey Pete's on the gas station sign.
Pete told his pals that when he died, he wanted to be buried standing up, facing the highway, hat on his head and guns in his belt, with a gallon of whiskey at his feet. His friends tried to accommodate Pete's wishes, but they were on death's door themselves and the desert defeated the letter of the request, though they apparently managed to fulfill the spirit of it -- by burying him in a slightly tilted grave (or so we've read), although accounts vary with regard to the whiskey: Some say he was found with an empty bottle in his lap; others say he wasn't.
The gas station was bought and sold several times after Pete died of miner's lung in 1933. But just the Mobil station existed at the state line when Ernie Primm arrived in the 1950s and filed a claim for the water rights on 400 acres in the vicinity. After satisfying the Bureau of Land Management's homesteading requirements, Primm expanded the gas station, added a 12-room motel, and opened a bar with slot machines. The business kept growing, until the Primms opened Whiskey Pete’s in 1977, the first of three casinos destined for State Line. The name wasn't changed to Primm until 1996, however, a decision that was made in order to avoid confusion with Stateline in northern Nevada.
From the start, Whiskey Pete’s Hotel-Casino was meant to be a highly visible landmark, with soaring towers and a castle exterior, even though the interior theme has always been strictly wild wild west.
Castles in the west aren’t particularly unusual. It’s possible that the Primms modeled their casino, to a certain extent, on Scotty’s Castle at Death Valley Ranch, 60 miles northwest in Death Valley National Park. There’s also the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, Calif., Vikingsholm Castle at Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, and dozens of others in California alone (check out dupontcastle.com/castles for thousands of examples all over the U.S., if castles are your thing).
Whiskey Pete’s castle theme also lends itself to marketing hyperbole, of course, such as "amenities fit for a king."
In 1994, construction workers uncovered a grave site while working across the road from the casino; reportedly, it was Whiskey Pete himself. The accidentally exhumed body was moved to a new resting place and Pete is now said to be buried in one of the caves where he formerly cooked up his moonshine. Primm marketing materials claim that the his ghost continues to watch over the property. If so, he's no doubt a little amazed at the 12 million gallons of gas the Mobil and Unocal stations pump every year, not to mention the three casinos, roller coaster, Ferris wheel, factory outlet mall, and a recently upgraded convenience store -- situated in California -- that sets records year after year for the number of California lottery tickets it sells (on account of Nevada not having a state lottery).
