Photos by MARK WAITE / PVT Deanna Floyd and Ande Floyd cook hot dogs during the Ace Hardware 43rd anniversary celebration. Jacob Sawin, 6, paints a face on a pumpkin in the garage at Ace Hardware. He said he painted a bat, a ghost and two faces. Sawin said for Halloween he'll dress up as a wizard with a skull for a face. Julie Moore cuts cake fo the 43rd anniversary celebration while Brenda Balkus carries a piece of cake to a hungry customer. Advertisement

Carl Moore, a co-owner of Floyd's Ace Hardware, remembers when he first came to Pahrump shortly after the hardware store opened 43 years ago.

"There was 350 people. I remember when they used to handcuff people to a tree where the old school was," Moore said. He referred to the old Manse Elementary School.

His dad, Rufus Moore, took a job at the Nevada Test Site in the 1960s.

Today Nye County Commissioners are talking about spending $18 million to build a new jail. Pahrump has an estimated population of 36,000 people and large developers like the Focus Group promise to bring in probably 14,000 more.

"This is a true Pahrump business that has initially grown from a tent to what you see today," Moore said, while watching other family members grill hot dogs during the 43rd anniversary celebration at the store last Saturday. "Are we thinking about other stores as Pahrump grows? Absolutely."

Ron and Charlotte Floyd moved from Chowchilla, in California's Central Valley, shortly after electricity arrived in Pahrump Valley. Irrigation pumps for the cotton fields were being converted from diesel to electric. The Moore family had been in the pump business in California, he said.

In those early days, women ran the store. Moore married into the family. He concedes his wife, Julie Moore, having been in the hardware store since she was 13, knows as much about parts as anybody.

Moore was one of the Pahrump students who rode the bus 27 miles to attend high school in Shoshone, Calif.

"We have always tried to be what the valley wanted us to be," Moore said.

In the past year, controversy surrounded the county's rejection of a Lowe's that would have provided competition to the longtime Ace Hardware store. The ever-active Pahrump rumor mill churned up rumors that Ace Hardware had somehow shot down that deal.

"People give you so much credibility, it's incredible," Moore joked. "We're very open minded about a Lowe's or Home Depot. We know it'll come someday. Are we worried about it? No, there's plenty of business for everybody."

Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis lobbied in the Focus Property Group development agreement for the payment of sales tax in Nye County when the big master-planned community gets built. Moore said there are still some lumber and parts being purchased in California and shipped out to Pahrump for construction jobs here, but not as much as there used to be.

Moore, and the other members of the family-owned business, will still be here for many years to come.