36 years ago this month

Horsemen and barbecue-beef eaters are expected to turn out in record numbers for the 9th annual Harvest Fall Festival in Pahrump Valley.

The renowned Harvest Festival barbecue followed by a free dance with two bands will start Saturday and continue through the night. The barbecue charge is $2 for adults and $1 for children.

A lively batch of events has been added to the regular two-day gymkhana schedule to add to spectator interest and there is a $50 prize barrel stakes race.

Five girls are competing for the Festival queen title held by Kelly McCullough. From Las Vegas is Edna Tremain; from Beatty is Connie Manley; and from Pahrump Valley are Gaye Lynn Forsman, Steffie Angell, and Joyce Stewart. All events take place at the arena and the adjoining community center.

30 years ago this week

Planting of the back nine holes of the Calvada golf course will start this month and construction of the club house will begin this fall. Both will be ready for use sometime next year.

When completed the course is expected to be the greenest in Nevada and beyond. More than1,800 sprinklers will be in use on the completed 7,224 yard championship course. This compares to about 1100 sprinklers on an average course.

The Calvada course is being built on 200 acres of land of which 180 acres will be in grass.

Ash Meadows -- long famous, first as an oasis near Death Valley and in more recent years as the site of one of Nevada's more famous brothels -- is soon to complete the work that is transforming it into the Ash Meadows Ranch Hunting and Conservation Club. Principal owner Jay Pennington hopes that final approvals from state water and health officials will be granted in the next few weeks. This would allow a reopening of the unique and historic spa in late September.

Pennington recently completed an agreement with Preferred Equities that gives the Ash Meadows organization the hunting rights on the 12,000 acre Spring Meadows spread bought by Preferred a few months ago. In addition Ash Meadows includes 120 deeded and 520 BLM leased acres.

20 years ago this week

A revised petition for a grand jury was approved in court but will face a challenge over whether District Attorney Phil Dunleavy or either of his two deputies are Nye County taxpayers.

Judge William Beko approved the revised petition writing that the petition was filed "by a taxpayer" and that there is "reasonable evidence ... that there has been misappropriation of public money ... or fraud ..." by a public officer. Peter Flangas, Attorney, for Sheriff Harold Stick Davis, planned to file a motion to squash the court order for a grand jury.

More than half of the 1123 signatures needed to force a recall election of District Attorney Phil Dunleavy have been collected. According to Hank Records, the 37-year resident of Amargosa Valley filed the petition.

Records said he expects to get over 2000 signatures, "maybe 2600," before the 60 day collection period ends in October. "I haven't met anyone that's against it and we haven't had anyone say we're wrong." Records points to Dunleavy's recent arrival in Nye County and says he doesn't have the best interest of the county at heart.

A giant racing crowd is expected to descend on Pahrump Valley and Nye County for the Nevada 500 off-road race which starts and finishes in Pahrump Valley. The race starts at Bob Ruud Memorial Speedway in Pahrump and is expected to be completed some where between nine and 20 hours. Three-thousand or more racers, crew members and spectators are expected to come to Pahrump Valley. It's estimated that as many as 20,000 will visit Nye County to see the race.

10 years ago this week

In what Nye County Sheriff Wade Lieseke called "by far the largest drug bust in the history of the county," four pounds of pure methamphetamine and more than 60 pounds of a chemical used in the production of the narcotic were seized at a residence in northern Pahrump.

The four pounds of meth, with an estimated street value of $180,000, is the most ever seized at one time in Nye County. The amount of the chemical compound ephedrine seized could have been used to make another 60 pounds of methamphetamine with a street value of $2.7 million. Also confiscated from the residence on Stephanie Street, was $36,000 in cash, 15 firearms, three vehicles and other property.

"These are major distributors," according to Bids for the next phase of work on Highway 160 will not be opened immediately thanks to a small change in the Nevada Department of Transportation's specifications for the 17-mile project.

According to NDOT spokesman Scott Magruder, the bids were to be opened already, but that was delayed by the unspecified change. "It's better that we do this now instead of negotiating the change with the contractor later on," Magruder said.

It's called the domino effect. Nick Robb's sudden disappearance last month was the first domino to fall. When the contractor and key employee of Majestic Homes vanished, it set in motion a series of personal collapses that left in its wake as many as three dozen people injured to various degrees.

Those injuries range from serious but resolvable cash flow problems for subcontractors to shattered lives. Among the most seriously affected is Robb's girlfriend, Sandy McClure. She woke one morning last month to find a note from him saying he was leaving the country. McClure lost her home and her truck; she now lives with her parents in Southern California and is pregnant with their second child.