You've covered the history of Laughlin, Primm and, I believe, Searchlight in southern Nevada, but I don't remember seeing a history of Jean. Can you tell us when that forlorn place was founded and if it ever amounted to anything?
As all southern Californian visitors to Vegas know, Jean, Nevada, is 30 miles southwest of the city on I-15. It hosts the shuttered Terrible’s Hotel-Casino, which is still standing after being closed for nearly six years, though it's fenced off and shows signs of fire damage. Jean also has two gas stations, one on each side of the freeway, a state prison, and a state police substation. It also boasts a U.S. post office, even though there no one lives there. That's right: According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Jean has not one single solitary resident.
Jean does have two attractions. The first is Terrible's Roadhouse, which opened in July 2018. This is believed to be the largest Chevron station in the world, with 96 gas pumps and electric-car charging stations, 60 restroom stalls, a 50,000-square-foot convenience store, a White Castle outlet, a 13-foot-tall Sasquatch statue, three airplanes hanging from the ceiling, and coffee, Red Bull, and beer bars. Terrible's is a must-stop if you've never experienced it before.
Jean is also the exit for the "Seven Magic Mountains" desert display. Installed by Swiss-born New York-based mixed-media artist Ugo Rondinone in May 2016, the large-scale public-art exhibition consists of seven 30- to 35-feet-tall totems of 33 car-sized boulders, each weighing about 20 tons, cut from a Nevada quarry, and painted in day-glo colors. They were originally scheduled to remain through May 2018, but the dismantling date has been extended several times and the Mountains were repainted in 2019.
Jean is also where you get off I-15 onto NV 161 to go to Goodsprings and its Pioneer Saloon, the oldest bar in Nevada. Actually, Jean was called Goodsprings Junction when it was founded in 1904 as a stop on the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad. George Fayle opened a mercantile at the station, also in 1904; only a year later, the settlement was renamed for George's wife Jean.
The Gold Strike Hotel and Gambling Hall opened in Jean in 1987; a year later, Nevada Landing debuted, which was designed to resemble two side-by-side riverboats. Nevada Landing closed in 2007 and was demolished in 2008. The Gold Strike was sold to JETT Gaming, owned by the Herbst family, in 2014 and it was rebranded as a Terrible's. In February 2022, Terrible's was sold for $45 million to Tolles Development, which plans to raze and replace it with an industrial park. As of this writing, the plans remain active, but are progressing very slowly, with no major construction underway on the industrial buildings.
