BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History PVT Harry Ford, of the Pahrump Museum, helped prepare the above map. Modern-day roads are included to offer perspective. Advertisement

Background

Human beings are thought to have first entered the Pahrump Valley about 12,000 years ago. Native American have maintained a presence here more or less continuously since then.

The first people of European ancestry showed up in the valley in the first half of the 19th century, perhaps as early as 1828 in the person of Canadian trapper and explorer Peter Skene Ogden. Another explorer, man of the West extraordinaire Colonel John C. Fremont, and his men crossed the Pahrump Valley in the spring of 1844 on their way east from California.

The beginnings of the development of the Pahrump Valley as we know it today can be traced to the mid-1870s.

In 1875, Charles Bennett and his family established what would eventually become the Pahrump Ranch at Pahrump Springs, next to a ranch owned by Chief Tecopa, a Southern Paiute. In 1882, Bennett sold out to Aaron and Rosie Winters for $20,000, the new owners having made money selling their borax claims in Death Valley.

In 1877, Joseph Yount and his family purchased the undeveloped ranch at Manse Spring from the Jordan brothers, who had bought it a year earlier from a Southern Paiute man named Mormon Charlie. The Younts subsequently developed what became the Manse Ranch into a southern Nevada showplace. Perhaps it's a bit unfair to the Bennetts, but I consider the real beginning of the community of Pahrump to be the Younts moving to Manse Spring.

Pahrump in the mid-1940s

In 1944 Harry Ford, who was then 7, moved to Pahrump with his family.

Luckily for those interested in Pahrump history, he is blessed with a good memory. Not long ago, we talked about land ownership and economics in Pahrump in the mid-1940s. In what follows, I will draw from his recollections.

Easy availability of water, of course, has always been the basis of Pahrump's development. There are two distinct watersheds in Pahrump. On the south is the big alluvial fan that comes out of Carpenter Canyon; the big spring at the Manse Ranch is located on the Manse fan. (An alluvial fan is a fan-shaped pile of sediment left by a stream coming out of a narrow canyon into a relatively flat valley.)

To the north is the Wheeler fan, which comes out of Wheeler Canyon and is the basis of the two big springs located about 400 or 500 feet apart on the old Pahrump Ranch. Ford thought the two Pahrump Ranch springs combined probably produced about 3,500 gallons per minute, whereas Manse Spring yielded less than that. Interestingly, the water from the Pahrump springs was warmer (76 degrees) than the water at Manse.

Water still flows at the Manse Spring but the Pahrump Springs dried up and were bulldozed over.

In 1944, the first big ranch on the approach from the south belonged to Lois Kellogg, who had purchased a large block of land adjoining the Manse Ranch in 1939.

The property, acquired mostly from the state, was located partly in Nye County and partly in Clark County. There was only one small spring on Kellogg's place; she drilled several fine artesian wells. She grew grain and hay. Lois Kellogg died in 1944, reportedly of tularemia. Her property, which consisted of several sections of land, was soon purchased by H.D. Cornell, a Southern California physician, who also owned the adjoining Manse Ranch, having acquired it in the late 1930s.

Today, the old Kellogg Ranch would be bordered on the south near Turner Road and on the north by Manse Road.

Adjoining Kellogg's place on the north was the Manse Ranch. "It was the largest cattle ranch in the area -- at least in terms of cows. They also did some farming," Ford said.

The Manse Ranch itself was about 2,000 acres, but had been expanded to 6,700 acres by Cornell, mostly through purchase of the Kellogg Ranch. The old Manse Ranch would have been bordered on the south by Manse Road and on the north by Gamebird Road. Homestead Road comes off State Highway 160 and runs due south, adjacent for two miles to the western ends of the old Manse and Kellogg ranches.

The Manse Ranch ran cattle in the Charleston Mountains. Ford said, "They would move the cattle into mountain pasture every spring ... it was a big thing. Everybody that was here -- which wasn't a whole lot of people -- would join in ... They would drive the cattle up Wheeler Wash. Its sides are very steep, so they had a drift fence up there and they would close the gate. Of course, in those days everybody left a gate like they found it. They would run their cattle all through the spring and summer months up there.

"About September or October, they would open the drift fence. They didn't have to go up and get them. After years of doing this, the cattle would come down on their own. They would come straight to the ranch. They would then push the cattle west out toward the California line. By this time, grass would have grown and dried out and there were lots of mesquite beans. And mesquite beans is like feeding the best grain in the country."

Elmer Bowman purchased the Manse Ranch in 1946 and turned it into "one of the most modern, profitable ranches in the country," according to Ford. In 1951, Bowman sold part of what had been the Kellogg Ranch to Tim Hafen.

The Pahrump Ranch was huge, perhaps 12,000 acres. In the mid-1940s, about 1,000 acres were being farmed. "Their cattle operation was a dandy," Ford said. "They had nice working corrals; they had a big barn, they had their horses; they had everything. But it was all enclosed within a fence -- they had the whole area fenced." All the cattle from both the Pahrump and Manse ranches were shipped to California.

The school that Ford and the other children in the valley attended was located on the Pahrump Ranch and is now on display at the Pahrump Museum. The southern boundary of the old Pahrump Ranch is at Gamebird Road, and parts of its northern boundary would be at Highway 372.

There were several other properties in the Pahrump Valley in the mid-1940s. One was the Raycraft Ranch, which adjoined the Pahrump Ranch on the north and extended north to Wilson Road. It consisted of 640 acres and had several small springs and artesian wells on it. Ford's family moved onto the Raycraft Ranch not long after moving to Pahrump and lived there for a number of years.

Frank "Pop" Buol had 160 acres adjoining the Raycraft place on the north where he operated a country store. He farmed about 40 acres, having a lovely orchard where he produced such delectables as apples, peaches, plums, apricots, and almonds. Pop's trees still produce.

He also raised grapes and made a good-quality wine.

Just prior to the Fords' arrival in Pahrump, Ray Van Horn from the Bakersfield, Calif., area inherited $10,000 from his father. Ford said, "The county had somehow ended up with thousands and thousands of acres on the northwest side of the valley. [Van Horn] purchased thousands of acres for $1.25 an acre."

But Van Horn wasn't making a dime on the property. Finally, however, he sold several large parcels for $5 an acre. In 1949, he went to Las Vegas and purchased James Cashman's wife's Cadillac. He also purchased a little duplex and is said to have done very well for the remainder of his life.

Many of the big farming operations in the northern part of the valley, beginning in the early 1950s, were carved out of Van Horn's holdings, including the Dorothy, Simkins, Basin, and Brady ranches. Van Horn's land extended as far south as Basin Road.

That's how it was in Pahrump in the mid-1940s.