36 years ago this month

Tom Parsons' Saddle West Café in the Pahrump Valley appears on its way to becoming the first business in Nye County to get a beer and wine license.

Parsons applied for an on-sale liquor license which includes the right to serve cocktails. However, it was determined at the liquor board hearing the valley already has three on-sale and six package foods licenses and that there are several previous additional applications for on sale licenses.

Nye County has only three types of liquor licenses: package, wholesale and on sale, which is a cocktail bar license.

30 years ago

The effort to form a town named Crystal from the 120-acre 40-Bar subdivision near the junction of Highways 95 and 160 was started eight months before the county commission took action that could result in brothels being outlawed in the county but accepted in towns, according to James Hinkle.

Hinkle is one of the 25 or so residents of the 40-Bar community and says he initiated the drive to form the town in order to get some needed services.

At the time, the Cherry Patch brothel was closed and there was no prospect that it would reopen.

The county road department in Pahrump Valley is expected to complete installing the 160 street and stop signs and then turn to work on the Pahrump Valley-Amargosa Valley Road.

The street sign work was to have been completed earlier but the signs had not been delivered. At least some of the signs have now arrived in Tonopah and are expected to be in Pahrump soon, according to local county road Foreman Harry "Button" Ford.

Many of the stop signs are already up but atop each of those signs a street sign needs to be installed.

20 years ago

Enrollment at Beatty Schools increased by 63 percent in December compared to the previous year as county enrollment hit a near record of 3,044 students in December, the end of the fourth month of the school year.

Pahrump Valley enrolled 1,128 students by mid-December, up from 1,104 a year earlier. Enrollment in 1984 in Pahrump was 966, which means the increase for the past four years totaled 16.7 percent.

Round Mountain has shown the most rapid growth during the past four years, going from 218 in 1984 to 330 in 1988 for a 51.3 percent jump in four years for grades kindergarten through eight.

High School students are bused to Tonopah.

Kim Woldehanna has mixed emotions about leaving Valley Bank's Pahrump branch after 15 years with the financial institution.

On one hand, he'll miss the daily contact with friends, acquaintances and employees as branch manager. But business is going so well at his Markem Financial Services Inc. escrow agency that it requires his full attention.

"In six months I could see the trend," Woldehanna said.

He had planned to leave the bank at the end of the year but his two escrow officers soon became swamped with work. They have been busier than he expected, so he decided his presence was needed full time at the agency.

District Attorney Phil Dunleavy admitted screwing up in buying a $12,000 auto despite the legal requirement that county purchases over $10,000 be bought through the bidding process.

Dunleavy said that he will buy the car if the county insists, even though he just bought a personal car last year. He plans to suggest the county get bids for the auto and to make up any difference in price out of his own pocket. Or the commission can ratify the purchase and the matter drop.

"There was no criminal intent. It was an honest mistake," the district attorney said.

10 years ago

The number of studio projects planned for Pahrump Valley has increased to two, thanks to a decidedly bitter split between two of the people heading up a single studio venture.

The rift developed little more than two months after Silver Eagle Unlimited Inc. unveiled plans to build a movie studio complex, complete with a Disneyland-style theme park, on property just inside Clark County in southern Pahrump.

Shortly thereafter the corporation's president and CEO and its movie studio CEO parted company in a dispute that could end up in civil court.

For now, however, both parties are publicly downplaying the split, focusing instead on their now-separate plans to turn southern Nevada into another beautiful downtown Burbank.

Although it is still not listed as one of seven recommended Community College System of Nevada projects in the state budget, Dan Simmons of the Community College of Southern Nevada said he remains confident the high-tech learning center will be funded in the coming legislative session.

The $5 million high-tech center, to be constructed between the high school and middle school where the school bus yard is currently located, is still of the "highest priority" to Richard Moore, president of CCSN, Simmons said.