36 years ago this month

Everyone knows there is a lot of gold around Tonopah -- how to mine and process it economically is the hard question.

Bill Clifford is preparing a $300,000 experiment at the Hill of Gold claim just south of Tonopah. The method is a "hot liquid process" of reclaiming precious metals from lower-grade ore that is not similar to gold reclaiming methods currently used.

Bill chose Tonopah for his experiment because property was reasonably priced, close to town, with water and power and with no roads to build.

The Hill of Gold claims were leased from Louie Meyers and Bobby Bottom of Tonopah.

Preferred Equities repurchased all leased rights to the Calvada Inn, restaurant, and market from a group headed by Las Vegas attorney Daryl EngeBregson. The plush complex has also planned space for a casino.

Extended restaurant hours will become effective shortly, with breakfast service being added to the lunch and dinner schedule. According to Preferred executive Jack Soules, selections and items would be increased in the market immediately.

30 years ago this week

The Nye County School Board approved two new teacher positions for Pahrump Valley -- one will be assigned to the high school, the other to the elementary school.

Four other new teachers were approved for Nye County, one each for Amargosa, Beatty, Round Mountain and Tonopah. If enrollment picks up at Duckwater, there will be an additional teacher assigned there.

The school board also approved the purchase of two new 84-passenger school buses to be put into use next school term.

The Nye County Commission approved a request from the Southern Nye County Search and Rescue organization for $2,000 to purchase a communications bus now located in Washoe County.

The recent search which involved the local S and R members, in cooperation with the Air Force, showed how badly modern equipment was needed, according to Commander Rufus Moore.

Efforts of the Southern Nye County Search and Rescue organization were very beneficial in locating three downed planes in Wallace Canyon and Indian Springs in February.

20 years ago this week

An announcement regarding the sale of Saddle West Casino is expected to be made before the end of the month.

Jack Sanders, consultant to the casino-hotel, said several apparently viable prospective buyers have looked over the operation. Dozens of people have inquired about Saddle West, with seven or eight of them serious and qualified to buy it.

Saddle West had a profitable year in 1987 and is off to an even better year in 1988.

More than 1,700 arrests were made during a massive 10-day anti-nuclear protest at the Nevada Test Site. In a related incident two protestors were said to have infiltrated the test site without being detected.

Sponsored by the American Peace Test, the protest attracted about 5,000 protestors from throughout the world. Their motto is, "Reclaim the Test Site."

The Nye County Sheriff's Office was kept busy arresting protestors by the scores. Those arrested were taken to Tonopah, where they were issued citations and released.

Some protestors said they would consider filing civil-rights charges against law enforcement authorities for making the arrests and then apparently not charging the protestors.

Several human bones uncovered last week in Pahrump by construction crews on Differ Anderson's property are of an American Indian between the ages of 37 and 42.

Those were the conclusions of Sheilagh Brooks, the UNLV physical anthropologist who studied them. A renowned expert who has spent years studying human remains, Brooks determined the bones were those of a male Indian who died an undetermined time ago. There were no historic or prehistoric artifacts associated with the burial site.

10 years ago this week

There is good and bad El Nino news at Death Valley National Park, according to Superintendent Richard Martin.

On the plus side, the unusually abundant rains have resulted in a spectacular wildflower bloom. On the minus side, the same rains have washed out an eight-mile stretch of Emigrant Pass Road that cuts through Emigrant Canyon.

"Blooms of this magnitude are extremely rare, occurring only a few times each century," Martin said, adding the rainfall that started in September and has continued intermittently since, is probably the most in Death Valley in the last 40 years.

If the timetable put forth by project manager Steve Zambrano proves accurate, Beatty will have a new justice court/sheriff's substation next winter, and Pahrump will have a new county complex next spring.

Both projects, in the discussion stages for years, got the go-ahead from the county commissioners when they voted to spend up to $7.6 million combined. The action essentially drained the Payments Equal to Taxes account as well as the county's ad valorem capital projects account.

The decision to build didn't come easily. Most of the debate centered on the cost of the projects coming in higher than anticipated.

With a reduction in clinic hours and a temporary halt to 24-hour urgent care, the Arcon Pahrump Center for Healthcare can break even -- almost.

According to Ken Richens, chief financial officer for new APCH management firm Rural Health Management Corp., the facility will continue to lose about $50,000 a month under the plan he detailed to the Pahrump Community Hospital District board during a scheduled workshop.

It is important to note that those losses -- roughly half of what Arcon was losing each month -- will continue only as long as everything else at APCH remains the same.

Another step toward the creation of a building department and the enforcement of various construction codes was taken by the commissioners during their meeting.

It also sparked some debate on where the commissioners will continue meeting in the coming months until the budget is passed. By a 4-0 vote, they approved drafting a bill to adopt uniform building and fire safety codes that would be implemented within the Pahrump Regional Planning District by a building inspection service.