The last time anyone cared about what happened in Las Vegas’ biggest little exurb, the Nye County sheriff took it upon herself to compare Gov. Sisolak to Hitler despite there being a much more recent and appropriate parallel to our west. Before that, voters in Pahrump overwhelmingly elected Dennis Hof's corpse to the Assembly; he was considerably less electable when he still had a pulse in his previous run two years prior. Then there was the time Pahrump passed the so-called “English Language and Patriot Reaffirmation Ordinance,” which made English the official language of Pahrump and forbade flying flags of foreign countries unless there was a United States flag flying above them.

How, exactly, that would have applied to the display of a Confederate battle flag was sadly never tested. 

Continuing in this tradition of industrial-strength crackpottery, then, was the most surreal amicus curiae of an absolutely surreal Supreme Court case — Robert E. Thomas, III’s filing on behalf of the imaginary states of New California and New Nevada. In his filing, as you might expect from ardent secessionist roleplayer, he argued in favor of each state’s fundamental right to enforce its own laws within its own borders, without interference from other states or the Supreme Court. 

Just kidding — he argued in favor of Texas’ claim that it knew how Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin should enforce their laws better than those states did, an argument which the Supreme Court tersely rejected. This, of course, is not the first time Texas made this argument (though Georgia was on Texas’ side the last time around); given what followed, I can understand why an ardent secessionist roleplayer might get a little confused.

Logical and philosophical inconsistencies aside, Thomas’ filing proved to be an eminently successful way to bring some notoriety and exposure to his otherwise risible plan to rebrand Nevada’s pre-1867 territory as “New Nevada.” Why, exactly, Nevada’s newest territorial addition — Clark County, in other words — would get to remain “Nevada” while the rest of the state would become “New Nevada” is a mystery. Perhaps it’s motivated by the same hard-nosed practicality that led Clark County to keep Nevada’s original area code while the rest of the state had their phone numbers changed in the 1990s. Or perhaps it’s just motivated by the ignorance of Nevada’s history one might stereotypically expect a retired lawyer from California to possess.

Given how he thinks Nevada’s second-largest metropolitan area is a “rural county,” my money’s on the latter. The next time he wants to lasso Reno and Sparks into his revanchist cowboy patriot fantasies, he should probably try visiting here a time or two first.

His confusion doesn’t end there, though. Contrary to what he (and, arguably, most of Pahrump’s residents) thinks, Pahrump isn’t actually rural, either. It hasn’t been, in fact, since Walt Williams sold Pahrump Ranch to developers in 1970. For the past 50 years, Pahrump has been completely and thoroughly exurban.

To be fair to Mr. Thomas, who just wants to enjoy his retirement, it’s not entirely his fault he bought into the marketing. He’s just another sucker in a valley full of them. 

***

Pahrump, it turns out, was built on a series of lies. 

When Williams sold his ranch, he and his fellow ranchers in Pahrump Valley knew full well they were drawing out far more water than the valley naturally produced from the precipitation and snowmelt captured on the prettiest side of the Charleston Range (under the right conditions, the southwest side of Mt. Charleston does a passable impression of a desert Matterhorn). Though declines in the flow of the natural springs that drew the first ranchers to Pahrump were observed as far back as 1910, water levels noticeably began to decline after large-scale pumping started in 1948. This was confirmed in a 1967 study on Pahrump’s hydrology, which observed that groundwater levels dropped more than 10 feet between 1959 to 1962, long before tens of thousands of people started calling Pahrump home. 

In 1970 — the same year Williams sold his ranch — the state engineer did a little math and realized over 91,000 acre feet per year of water rights were issued in a basin that might naturally replenish roughly 12,000 acre feet of water per year. Additionally, of those 91,000 acre feet, roughly 40,000 acre feet had been pumped each year through the latter half of the 1960s — more than three times the valley’s natural recharge rate. To keep things from getting even worse, the state engineer stopped issuing new water rights, in much the same way I stopped applying for new credit cards in college and for many of the same reasons. 

In other words, the state’s top water regulator closed the barn door after the horse escaped the farm, assumed a new identity, joined some other country’s foreign legion, moved somewhere without an extradition treaty, met a gorgeous filly at a scenic beachside resort, married the filly, left her for a younger filly, had a few foals with both of them, helped raise their grandfoals, and then died peacefully of old age, only to be disturbed in rest by an impertinent whip-wielding op-ed columnist in need of a metaphor.

The amount of paper water in Pahrump Valley was the first lie. 

Ranchers, however, are fundamentally businesspeople. Successful ones aren’t sentimental. They knew water in Pahrump was limited — far more limited than the state pretended it was on paper. The question they needed answered was how much cotton (Pahrump was home to Nevada’s only cotton gin and over 97 percent of Nevada’s cotton production during the 1960s) and alfalfa could they grow, and how much money could they make, before either the state or nature turned off the taps. With the state engineer’s ruling, growth was out of the question, and the steadily declining water table indicated nature wanted a word, too. That meant it was time to get out and leave someone else holding the bag.

So they did — some faster than others. Cue the developers.

Developers, like ranchers, are also businesspeople. Again, successful ones aren’t sentimental. Pahrump’s developers knew what the state of the water table was when they started building and platting. They just knew they’d turn a tidy profit if they subdivided, sold and built their parcels out before the water ran out. To do that, though, they had to convince skeptical buyers there was plenty of water. 

Of course, the easiest way to convince someone who doesn’t know any better that you have a lot of something is by throwing it around on absolute nonsense. So that’s exactly what Preferred Equities Corporation, the developer who purchased Williams’ ranch, did. At the entry to their new subdivision, they built a fountain flanked by tall trees and green grass. From the air, the fountain looked like a green eye. Further down the street, they built a brand new golf course, nearly two miles long. 

The message was loud and clear — if Pahrump Valley had enough water for all of this, surely there’s enough for your new home.

That was the second lie. 

Water, however, is a necessary but insufficient condition for development. There are plenty of valleys in Nevada with water. Most of them, however, aren’t home to 40,000 people. What makes Pahrump different? 

The answer is proximity and distance. 

Proximity-wise, Pahrump is roughly an hour outside of Las Vegas, yet not in direct eyesight of it. The only sign Pahrump is anywhere near the city is the steady nighttime glow visible on the east-southeastern horizon. Consequently, Pahrump’s prospective residents could easily enjoy most of the benefits of living in Las Vegas without having to actually, well, live in Las Vegas.

As for distance, Nye County’s portion of Pahrump Valley is roughly twenty-five miles long and fifteen miles wide (Clark County has a sizable portion of the valley as well, but nobody builds anything in it). To put this into perspective for Northern Nevadans, this is about as wide as the distance from Verdi to East Sparks and as long as the distance from Geiger Grade to Bordertown — in other words, it’s as large as the Truckee Meadows and the North Valleys combined, which are home to more than 400,000 people, and considerably more flat. Since existing paper water rights aren’t enough to support that many people, to say nothing of the actual watershed, this means there’s more than enough land to give each and every new potential household plenty of living space. 

Roughly an acre of living space, in fact.

Putting the two together with Nye County’s famously apathetic approach to governance, developers pitched an enticing vision: Buy a lot in the “Heart of the New Old West,” where “roughing it” now meant driving an hour to the big city where all the services and shops are, and you could do pretty much anything you want. Just drill for water, dig for septic, bring your own trailer, and you could live your life as you saw fit without care or concern for the rest of your days.

That was the third lie.

If you’re wondering what sort of industry this pitch attracted, the answer was basically none. Pahrump Valley supported just enough agriculture to employ a couple hundred people and Pahrump’s ranchers had to strip mine the valley’s aquifer to keep even that many busy. As for mining, the usual path to prosperity for rural Nevada towns, a small gold mine started in the north end of the valley in the early 20th century but never amounted to much. Manufacturing, meanwhile, requires actual water, not paper water, and the Colorado River is a considerably more reliable source than a long-overtaxed valley aquifer which might collapse on itself at any moment. Consequently, the only industries reliably attracted to Pahrump were those who couldn’t operate closer to Las Vegas without bureaucratic hassle — brothels, bespoke shooting ranges, and high-end defensive driving courses, mostly.

This, incidentally, is why Pahrump is not strictly rural. Without Las Vegas, Pahrump would look more like Rachel or Fish Lake Valley and less like a turbocharged Silver Springs or Stagecoach. 

If you’re wondering what sort of people this pitch attracted, the answer was either retirees who wanted to live in a live action unmoderated internet forum or people too young (or broke) to formally retire but too old or obnoxious for anyone to offer them the benefit of the doubt anymore. Following these people were the service workers (and their families) needed to support them — first well-drillers and construction workers, then eventually store clerks, locals-oriented casino employees, restaurateurs, and so on. As Las Vegas grew, workers willing to trade a 60-mile commute in each direction for a chance to own their own home moved into the valley as well. 

Much of Pahrump’s political dysfunction is driven by the tension between those who live in Pahrump because they either can’t or don’t have to work, and those who live in Pahrump to make a living. For the retired and the cantankerous, Pahrump was supposed to deliver in meatspace what sites like 4chan and 8kun deliver in cyberspace — a “safe space” where they could be who they really are and say what they actually mean without judgment or worry, even if it turned out they, like former county Assessor Shirley Matson, thought Latinos were “locusts.” For those providing these cantankerous, asocial retirees the services they needed to survive on their acre-sized kingdoms, on the other hand, Pahrump was supposed to be a quiet place where they could peacefully raise their children without the negative influences and hassles of the big city. 

Then 2008 hit and the developers went bankrupt.

***

The Great Recession started the great unraveling of the lies that built Pahrump. It’s nowhere near finished.

Ironically, many of the developers ran out of money before they ran out of water. Running low on both, Preferred Equities Corporation turned off the faucets for both the fountain and the golf course, killing them both off. The golf course, acquired by Pahrump’s water utility during bankruptcy proceedings, proved largely unsalvageable; parts of it are now a park. The fountain, acquired by Pahrump’s electrical utility, was eventually restored after the utility dumped it onto the county government’s lap, though it’s still nowhere near as green as it used to be. Developers only started to meaningfully reenter the valley a few years ago — housing permits in 2015 were still a fraction of what were issued in the 1990s.

As for the valley’s water, that problem might just have to solve itself. As this very publication reported, the message Dennis Hof pushed through his primary against James Oscarson was his opposition to water and well controls. When I lived in the valley in the 1990s, I heard more than a few locals claim Pahrump’s water wasn’t running low at all — under the depleting “surface water” was supposed to be an aquifer roughly the size of the Mississippi River, which human beings could never hope to deplete. For those who believe such stories, metered wells and drilling restrictions smack of government-created scarcity.

It’s a nice, reassuring story. Life, however, has the nasty habit of bringing truth to those who would rather live in fiction, whether they want to live in reality or not. Wells are already dropping — sooner or later, they’ll run dry. 

Unfortunately, denial is a perfectly normal response to discovering you’ve been conned. The people who moved into Pahrump have been lied to from the very beginning — lied to about how much water was underneath them, how much the actions of their neighbors would affect them, how much their actions would affect their neighbors — even how rural of a community they were moving into. It’s no surprise the town swims in denial. It’s no surprise people like Robert E. Thomas, III craft elaborate alternate realities where their delusions serve as truth. 

The alternative would mean realizing ranchers and developers left a bunch of dirt broke retirees and their dirt broke service workers an increasingly uninhabitable valley with a broken ecosystem and a declining water supply. The alternative would mean accepting they were taken for a ride and are stuck holding the bag, with nobody left to hand it off to.

David Colborne has been active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he has blogged intermittently on his personal blog, as well as the Libertarian Party of Nevada blog, and ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate. He serves on the Executive Committee for both his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is the father of two sons and an IT professional. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [email protected].