Posted on: December 20, 2024, 03:50h.
Last updated on: December 20, 2024, 03:50h.
UPDATE: Whiskey Pete’s has already closed. However, owner Affinity Interactive issued a statement characterizing the closure as only “temporary,” explaining its purpose as “to feature new and ongoing investments at Primm Resorts and Buffalo Bill’s.” It did not say how long the casino would be closed. This is a developing story…
Whiskey Pete’s, which opened in 1977, will close by year’s end. That’s according to Casino.org’s Vital Vegas, which confirmed the sad but expected news with an executive who oversees the property. The casino’s hotel is no longer accepting online reservations.
Whiskey Pete’s is part of the Primm Valley Casino Resorts brand owned by Affinity Gaming, the Las Vegas-based company that also owns Buffalo Bill’s and the Primm Valley Resort in Primm, and the Silver Sevens a mile east of the Strip. Affinity acquired Primm Valley Resorts in August 2007 from MGM Resorts for $400 million, back when Affinity was known as Herbst Gaming. (It emerged from bankruptcy as Affinity in May 2011.)
Grimm, Nev.
Primm has experienced a steady decline in business for the past 20 years, but the pandemic was a death blow. Since then, its 371K square-foot outlet mall, which opened as the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas in 1998, has lost all but one of its tenants.
Primm’s once-popular amusement park at Buffalo Bill’s, featuring the world-famous Desperado roller coaster, closed in 2019 and never reopened.
And, Primm Valley Resort & Casino was so empty on July 18 that Lydia Salmen, 70, was able to enter its unstaffed cage and make off with $625K in currency and $27K in casino chips. She and her husband, John, were only caught because their Nissan hatchback was videotaped by a police body cam during an unrelated visit to the property on June 25.
According to Vital Vegas, Whiskey Pete’s will be followed into oblivion by Buffalo Bill’s. Although that casino resort is still accepting reservations through next year, it is now closed Monday through Thursday.
Affinity will now focus all its attention on Primm Valley Resort & Casino, which Vital Vegas reports will be the recipient of “additional investment and changes,” including a new Denny’s.
The Whiskey Pete Story
Yes, there was a real Whiskey Pete, and no, he didn’t deserve to have a casino resort, or anything else, named after him.
Peter McIntyre, a former miner and bootlegger, ran a gas station with two pumps — named State Line Station after the town’s original name — on the future site of Whiskey Pete’s from the late 1920s until 1932.
According to newspaper accounts at the time, he was a violently antisocial ex-con who served two months in jail for running an illegal speakeasy, then six months for bootlegging whiskey at the start of Prohibition.
According to a 1928 story in the Las Vegas Review newspaper, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce received several complaints from tourists about McIntyre. According to one, he shot at them as they exited his gas station.
If gas was how McIntyre planned to turn over a new leaf, doing it in State Line, Nev. (renamed Primm in 1996 to avoid confusion with another Stateline, Nev.) wasn’t a very good plan because few cars stopped to gas up there back then. So Whiskey Pete fell back into his old illegal ways. He distilled whiskey and sold it at his station on the down low.
An article about McIntyre in the March 28, 1931, edition of the Las Vegas Age noted that “Pete resents the bad name given to him by a portion of the public and the press, alleging that he is not so bad as he is painted.” The occasion of the article was McIntyre’s release on bail after shooting Rube Bradshaw, the Elgin, Nev. postmaster.
In 1932, McIntyre’s wife had him committed to a sanitarium, where he died the following year. His coffin was supposedly buried upright, facing what was then called the Arrowhead Trails Highway, to honor McIntytre’s request to “see all those sons of bitches going by.” (That’s a myth we busted in 2022, by the way.)
Ernest J. Primm, State Line’s eventual namesake, purchased State Line Station, which by then had become State Line Bar-Slots, in 1936. He opened his new casino, which he named in McIntyre’s honor, on the property in June 1977. A hotel tower was added in 1993.