EDITOR’S NOTE: “Vegas Myths Busted” publishes new entries every Monday, with a incentive Flashback Friday edition. Today’s accounting entry in our on-going serial originally ran on Dec. 16, 2022.
On Feb. 2, 1994, grammatical construction workers were grading the earth for the wakeful rail that today connects II casinos, Whiskey Pete’s and Buffalo Bill’s, crosswise Interstate 15 in Primm, Nev. One of their tractors struck a crumbling plywood coffin, knocking it open. What they found interior should get lay an ending to single of Nevada’s biggest tall tales. Instead, that tale has only grown taller.
Peter “Whiskey Pete” McIntyre, the legendary namesake of the casino, was supposedly interred with his precious 10-gallon chapeau on his head, six-shooters strapped to his side, and a bottleful of his possess corn liquor whiskey. His coffin was also supposedly buried upright, veneer what was so called the Arrowhead Trails Highway, to honor McIntytre’s asking to “see all those sons of bitches going by.”
Sorry, entire internet. Every 1 of your Whiskey Pete stories is inaccurate. According to Robert I Sedlacek, who supervised the mental synthesis crew that found McIntyre’s coffin, it contained his bones, a tuft of pilus on his skull, his shirt with a few buttons missing, his dentures, and that’s it. There were no guns or whiskey bottles. And the coffin wasn’t buried standing up. It didn’t fifty-fifty feature a slight leaning to it. It was perfectly take down to the strand it repose underneath.
“I don’t cognize how all that sour stuff and nonsense gets come out there,” Sedlacek told Casino.org.
Who Was Whiskey Pete?
That’s the query asked for 46 years by everyone stuck inwards bumper-to-bumper holiday traffic 'tween Las Vegas to Calif. on the 15. (Whiskey Pete’s is a 16-story castling that looms ridiculously in high spirits o'er the barren landscape, demanding attention.)
Pete McIntyre was a former mineworker who served ii months inwards poky for running an illegal speakeasy, then sixer months inward clink for bootlegging whisky at the source of Prohibition. By the tardily 1920s, he opened State Line Station, a gaseous state send with two pumps on the Battle Born State position of its body politic border with California.
If gaseous state was how McIntyre planned to turn o'er a young leaf, doing it inwards State Line, Nev. (renamed Primm inward 1996 to avoid confusedness with another Stateline, Nev.) wasn’t a rattling right program because few cars stopped-up(a) to gaseous state upwards there back up then. So, McIntyre cut down support into his older illegal ways. He distilled whisky and sold it at his place on the shoot down low.
The Man, the Myth, the Legend
The number 1 misconception most people acquire well-nigh Whiskey Pete comes from the smiling sketch mascot featured on the casino’s signalize and inward its marketing. McIntyre wasn’t a smiling type of dude. In fact, according to a 1928 report inward the Las Vegas Review newspaper, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce said it received several complaints from tourists virtually McIntyre’s violently anti-social behavior. According to one, he even out barb at them as they exited his gas station.
An clause virtually McIntyre inwards the Mar 28, 1931 edition of the Las Vegas Age paper noted that “Pete resents the uncollectible identify presumption to him past a portion of the public and the press, alleging that he is not so bad as he is painted.” The occasion of the clause was McIntyre’s free on bond after shooting Rube Bradshaw, the Elgin, Nev. postmaster.
According to Bradshaw, he had stopped at State Line Station with his two sons to get gaseous state and coffee. When he entered and asked for a cup, he said, McIntyre called him a “vile name” and crack him inward the shoulder. The assault with a mortal(a) weapon bearing was dropped after Bradshaw failed to demo inwards judicature ternion break up times.
Crazy inwards Love
In ahead of time 1932, McIntyre married Lauretta Frances Enders. By Oct of that same year, she attempted to have him committed to the Stillwell Sanitarium in Banning, Calif., citing the unprovoked rages he flew into. McIntyre retorted that the rages were an conquer response to her running around raw in the hills with other men. group A try denied Enders’ motion.
Whatever McIntyre’s mental condition, his physical unity wasn’t good. He had miner’s lung and required treatment, or at least what passed for it inward those days. Enders reportedly stayed with her married man at the sanitarium until he showed signs of recovery. At that point, she left.
Within a year, on Nov. 11, 1933, McIntyre died at Stillwell of his disease.
Enders ran State Line Station for a twain of years before marketing it. It changed hands a few times since, expanding into State Line Bar-Slots before existence purchased by Ernest J. Primm, eventual namesake of the town. Primm renamed the send Whiskey Pete’s and and so opened his casino hotel, inwards McIntyre’s honor, on the site inward 1977.
Where is Whiskey Pete Now?
According to Wikipedia, McIntyre’s exhumed dead body “was moved and is now said to be buried inwards 1 of the caves where MacIntyre cooked upwardly his moonshine.”
That’s just now to a greater extent false news.
When we found him, i went and told the owner,” Sedlacek recalled. “Then we were told to position him back inwards the ground, so we built a young boxful for him, and reburied him inwards the same area where we found him.”
Though the gambling casino at Whiskey Pete’s remains open, its 777-room hotel ne'er reopened following the pandemic shutdown. The hotel is currently used only when as runoff booking for the Primm Valley Resort. type A spokesperson for the hotel’s owner, Primm Valley Resorts, could non say how permanent the hotel gag law was.
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