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Note: The
picture to the right shows a portion of the land, facing north toward Jean, Nevada, targeted for the supplemental airport
- Ivanpah Valley Airport - located 30 miles south of Las Vegas. The new airport will provide additional
capacity far into the 21st century for Southern Nevada's, and Southern California's, air passenger needs.
Photo by Robert L. Candiotti, July 2007.
It has
almost been a year since I first learned about the proposed "supplemental airport" to be located in Ivanpah Valley,
Clark County, Nevada. Ivanpah Airport will go beyond the capacity limitations that Las Vegas' McCarran International
Airport will face around 2015 when its growth options are expended due to surrounding housing and
commercial development.
I was rather stunned by the information because already for a year and a half I had been
commuting between Las Vegas and Primm, Nevada, five days a week, working at Fashion Outlets at the California-Nevada border.
I knew exactly where Ivanpah Airport is proposed to go.
I had passed by Ivanpah Valley hundreds of times. I
had become rather familiar with the flat stretch of struggling yucca and parched lake-beds. Dry emptiness. Neither here
nor there. But chalk it up for being big. And flat.
Sometimes when you're passing by, you will see parachutists
drop out of the sky, float over Interstate 15, and delicately touch the sand only a few yards from determined vehicles pushing
toward destinations placed both north and south. And sometimes four-wheeled "boats" with colorful sails would
fly along the level desert floor. More often than not, catching the wind in the desert is no problem.
"An airport is going to come here?" I was intrigued
by the concept. A new airport, handling many millions of passengers every year, would be constructed in a remote
flatland between Las Vegas and the California border. I read it was already being scrutinized by an Environmental
Impact Study supervised by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Bureau of Land Management.
I started to read pretty much everything about Ivanpah Airport
and Ivanpah Valley that I could find on the Internet. That led me to the public library. And the reading led to thinking.
The thinking has led to the creation of this website.
Robert L. Candiotti
Las Vegas and Ivanpah Valley, Nevada July 7, 2007
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Past, Present and
Future of Ivanpah Valley
Once
I started to read about Ivanpah Valley, I learned quickly about the history of the Paiute Indians in both the north and south
of what became the state of Nevada. I also read a little bit about the travelers along the Old Spanish Trail beginning in
the latter part of the 1700s, then the arrival of the Mormons in the mid-1800s and the presence of the mining industry from
that time into the 20th Century. The Paiutes lost their grasp on the land. There were many instances when they were treated
cruelly.
The number
of new inhabitants in the Clark County area grew rapidly.
Today, Ivanpah Valley consists primarily of the
towns named Jean and Primm. Jean is about to go through dramatic modernization. Property owner MGM Mirage
Corp., and Las Vegas-based developers American Nevada Holdings and Cloobeck Companies, are working on a project to develop
166 acres for a master-planned community.
The three casinos in Primm have recently been purchased from MGM
Mirage by Herbst Gaming, Inc. Adjacent to one of the casinos, Primm Casino and Resort, is the separately-owned Fashion
Outlets which has recently announced an upcoming expansion of its square-footage and number of stores.
In other
near-by towns - Goodsprings and Sandy Valley - change seems to be in the air.
Ivanpah Airport is now scheduled
to be completed and operational in 2018. The airport's Phase 1 goes to 2025, and a Phase 2 is already in the long-term
plans. Ivanpah Airport - which is supposed to handle mostly international, long-haul domestic and charter flights
- is being designed to handle a significant amount of Southern Nevada's air passenger business far into
the 21st century.
The past, present and future of Ivanpah Valley is what this website is about.
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