Question of the Day - 29 November 2017

We’d have to say that what’s going on down in Cal-Nev-Ari (pronounced Cal-Nev-Air) today is the same thing that’s been going on for the past 50-odd years: a whole lotta nothin', other than the entire town is for sale for $8 million.

In the early 1960s, two married pilots, Slim and Nancy Kidwell, had a dream of starting a little Nevada town for small-plane enthusiasts; they’d offer an airstrip, hangars, and a fly-in casino. Flying around the Nevada desert, Slim located an abandoned military airstrip, Stage Field, around 70 miles south of Las Vegas right on US 95.

In 1965, Slim and Nancy set their sights on acquiring 650 acres around the airstrip for free under a federal land program that required them to demonstrate that the “town” could sustain itself. They lived in a trailer near the landing strip and named their settlement of four (including the cat and dog) after its proximity to the confluence of the three states.

For a year, they hauled water in 55-gallon drums from Davis Dam 30 miles south around the site of today's Laughlin (at the time, Laughlin was just a bait shack on the Colorado River) for their domestic needs. It took a year to dig a well, run irrigation, and grow 20 acres of barley to prove sustainability. However, as soon as the government deeded them the land, they plowed the crop under and started building their dream town.

They sold half-acre and one-acre plots to pilots who wanted a home and hangar in the desert; even today, pilot homeowners can use the town’s dirt roads to taxi from their driveways to the airstrip. The Kidwells continued building infrastructure, brought in electricity, and dug two more wells. Slowly, the town grew.

When Slim, who was 34 years older than Nancy, died in 1983, the landing strip was renamed Kidwell Airport. Nancy married Slim’s son, Ace, from an earlier marriage, also a pilot. Ace took ill in 2010, which was when Nancy, by then 71, first put up the whole town for sale for $17 million. Since then, the price has dropped to $8 million.

Nancy Kidwell is Cal-Nev-Ari’s biggest landlord and only employer. She still works 10 hours a day, six days a week, managing the town of 350 and a couple dozen employees. 

Included in the sales price are the dirt airstrip, convenience store, post office, mobile home and RV parks, 10-room motel, restaurant, bar, the casino that comes with a non-restricted gaming license, a full mile of US 95 frontage, and 500 vacant acres ready to be developed.

The Las Vegas broker handling the sale says that he’s heard from buyers who’ve wanted to turn Cal-Nev-Ari into a larger retirement community, a renewable-energy park, a motorsports facility, a survival school, a dude ranch, a shooting range, and even a marijuana resort. So far, though, nothing has panned out.