Question of the Day - 22 August 2025

What is in Primm’s future? Not much. But we’ll get to that.

First, establishing specific dates in connection with the history of Primm is about as easy as catching one of the tumbleweeds that blow through the area. We’ll do our best.

“Primm is actually the first encouraging sign that you’re almost to Las Vegas after a long drive through the desert. At the border are three casinos rising from the barren landscape,” wrote San Francisco Chronicle Contributing Editor Christine Hitt about the improbable resort burg that has seen better days.

The tiny town, mostly populated by casino employees (between 700 and 1,200, depending on the source), owes its name to pioneer Ernest Primm. In the early 1950s — that’s as precise at it gets — Primm bought 400 acres along the California/Nevada border. Eventually, with the help of the federal government, he doubled that acreage and the town of State Line was born. 

In addition to a gas station (much needed in those parts), Primm built a motel and coffee shop. He also put in slot machines and State Line’s destiny was set. In 1981 after a three-decade reign, Ernest Primm died at the age of 80, leaving his desert empire to son Gary. 

Dreaming big, the younger Primm started building casinos, transforming his dad’s motel into what we now know as Whiskey Pete’s. Primm Valley Resort, the only one still operating, arrived on the scene in 1990, followed by Buffalo Bill’s in 1994. It seems counterintuitive that people driving to Las Vegas to gamble would stop and do it in Primm instead, but the formula worked -- at least for a time.

(To digress, we once read an unpublished novel that included a road trip from southern California by a crew of "dumb and dumberer" guys, none of whom had ever been to southern Nevada. As they were approaching the state line at Primm, one of them announced officiously, "Gentleman, I give you Las Vegas.") 

In 1996, State Line was renamed Primm. This was partly to lionize the elder Primm and partly to avoid confusion with the northern Nevada town of Stateline. “Designating State Line as Primm is the best way I can think of to honor my father, his diligence, and his dreams for this area,” the younger Primm told the Las Vegas Sun.

Another digression: Whiskey Pete’s owes its name to a real person, the first entrepreneur of Ivanpah Dry Lake, on which Ernest built his businesses. That was Pete MacIntyre, who supplemented his filling station’s meager Prohibition-era revenue by bootlegging booze. Hence his nickname. When MacIntyre died in 1933, he had himself buried standing up, a bottle of moonshine clasped in his hands. He was unintentionally unearthed many years later when construction workers ran into his grave while trying to build a pedestrian overpass. MacIntyre’s remains were relocated to a nearby cave, although there’s no word on whether he was recumbent or still erect.

Tomorrow: The rise and fall of the Primm casinos … and Primm itself.