Posted on: December 17, 2024, 11:32h.
Last updated on: December 17, 2024, 11:38h.
Anyone who’s ever been stuck in traffic between Las Vegas and Southern California on Interstate 15 knows the name Whiskey Pete’s. They may never have entered its 16-story castle that looms ridiculously high over the barren landscape on the Nevada side of its border with California. But they’ve stared at it, wondering, “Who stays here?” The answer, pretty soon, will be no one.
Whiskey Pete’s, which opened its doors in 1977 with 777 rooms, 31 table games and 1,360 slots, will close by year’s end. That’s according to Casino.org’s Vital Vegas, who confirmed the sad but expected news with an executive who oversees the hotel. The casino’s hotel is no longer accepting online reservations.
Whiskey Pete’s part of the Primm Valley Casino Resorts brand owned by Affinity Gaming, the Las Vegas-based company that also owns Buffalo Bill’s and the Primm Valley Resort in Primm, and the Silver Sevens a mile east of the Strip. Affinity acquired Primm Valley Resorts in August 2007 from MGM Resorts for $400 million, back when Affinity was known as Herbst Gaming. (It emerged from bankruptcy as Affinity in May 2011.)
Grimm, Nev.
Primm has experienced a steady decline in business for the past 20 years but the pandemic was a death blow. Since then, its 371K square-foot outlet mall, which opened as the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas in 1998, has lost every single one of its tenants and now sits abandoned.
Primm’s once-popular amusement park at Buffalo Bill’s, featuring the world famous Desperado roller coaster, closed in 2019 and never reopened.
And Primm Valley Resort & Casino was so empty on July 18 that Lydia Salmen, 70, was able to enter its unstaffed cage and make off with $625K in currency and $27K in casino chips. She and her husband, John, were only caught because their Nissan hatchback was videotaped by a police body cam during an unrelated visited to the property on June 25.
According to Vital Vegas, Whiskey Pete’s will be followed into oblivion by Buffalo Bill’s. Although that casino resort is still accepting reservations through next year, it is now closed Monday through Thursday.
Affinity will now focus all its attention on Primm Valley Resort & Casino, which Vital Vegas reports will be the recipient of “additional investment and changes” including a new Denny’s.
The Whiskey Pete Story
Yes, there was a real Whiskey Pete, and no, he didn’t deserve to have a casino resort, or anything else, named after him.
Peter McIntyre, a former miner and bootlegger, ran a gas station with two pumps — named State Line Station after the town’s original name — on the future site of Whiskey Pete’s from the late 1920s until 1932.
According to newspaper accounts at the time, he was a violently anti-social ex-con who served two months in jail for running an illegal speakeasy, then six months for bootlegging whiskey at the start of Prohibition.
If gas was how McIntyre planned to turn over a new leaf, doing it in State Line, Nev. (renamed Primm in 1996 to avoid confusion with another Stateline, Nev.) wasn’t a very good plan because few cars stopped to gas up there back then. So Whiskey Pete fell back into his old illegal ways. He distilled whiskey and sold it at his station on the down low.
According to a 1928 story in the Las Vegas Review newspaper, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce received several complaints from tourists about McIntyre. According to one, he shot at them as they exited his gas station.
An article about McIntyre in the March 28, 1931 edition of the Las Vegas Age noted that “Pete resents the bad name given to him by a portion of the public and the press, alleging that he is not so bad as he is painted.” The occasion of the article was McIntyre’s release on bail after shooting Rube Bradshaw, the Elgin, Nev. postmaster.
In 1932, McIntyre’s wife had him committed to a sanitarium, where he died the following year. His coffin was supposedly buried upright, facing what was then called the Arrowhead Trails Highway, to honor McIntytre’s request to “see all those sons of bitches going by.” (That’s a myth we busted in 2022, by the way.)
Ernest J. Primm, State Line’s eventual namesake, purchased State Line Station, which by then had become State Line Bar-Slots, in 1936. He opened his new casino hotel, which he named in McIntyre’s honor, on the property in June 1977.
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