Primm: The Border Town That Runs on Impatience

Sitting exactly on the Nevada-California line, Primm exists because of one simple fact: California drivers get impatient. The spot started in the nineteen twenties as nothing more than a gas station run by Pete MacIntyre, who reportedly turned to bootlegging when fuel sales were too slow. After MacIntyre died in nineteen thirty-three he was buried in an unmarked grave nearby, and the town's first casino later took his name as Whiskey Pete's.

Ernest Primm built a motel and coffee shop here in the nineteen fifties, the modest seed of what would grow. His son Gary expanded the operation into a cluster of casino hotels through the nineteen eighties and nineties. The town was known as State Line until nineteen ninety-six, when it was renamed Primm to honor the family.

Today it is the last and first burst of Nevada gambling for millions of drivers making the run between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.