The year 1931 was a pivotal one for Reno's developing tourism industry. That was the year the Nevada legislature legalized wide-opened gambling and lowered the residency requirement for a divorce from three months to six weeks.
That same year, Charles Thompson opened the Silver State Lodge on what was then known as the Verdi Highway, the section of U.S. 40 heading west out of Reno toward California. The five-acre property consisted of a grouping of 16 small log cabins and a main lodge building, which was especially distinctive for its hexagonal shape. The cabins, with their knotty-pine-paneled walls and ceilings, were named for trees: The Cottonwood, The Tamarac, The Oak, The Cypress, and the Elm. The Elm was the largest of the cabins and featured a native-stone fireplace. Each cabin had a small kitchen and a front porch. It would have been a cozy spot to spend an extended stay in Reno. The going rate at the time was $50 per day, except in the winter when it dropped to $50 per week.
In its heyday in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the Silver State catered to enumerable divorce-seekers, motor tourists, stars such as Bing Crosby and Greta Garbo, lounge acts performing in the showrooms, and western entertainers in town for the rodeo. In 1938 it was sold to the Reynolds family, who had long operated an auto court in Elko, and Rodney J. Reynolds ran the property for the next 25 years.
With the completion of Interstate 80 and the demise of the divorce trade in the 1970s, the Silver State Lodge fell into use as low-income housing. The early 2000s brought several proposals to renovate the cabins. One plan was to upgrade the property to attract higher-income tenants, while another proposed to offer use of the cabins to women seeking help from drug dependency, poverty, and domestic abuse.
Unfortunately, none of the plans to preserve the property came to pass and by 2005, the cabins were demolished. All that remains of the iconic Silver State Lodge is the sign on the edge of the roadway.
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Interviewed in 1977, Rodney J. Reynolds, who ran the Silver State Lodge for 25 years, recalls recognizing the growing potential of Nevada’s tourist industry in the 1930s. Source: Rodney J. Reynolds: A Cold War Politician of Nevada in the Fifties. Oral history conducted by Bruce Walker Reynolds, University of Nevada Oral History Program, 1977. Creator: Bruce Walker Reynolds Date: 1977
Rodney J. Reynolds: A Cold War Politician of Nevada in the Fifties. Oral history conducted by Bruce Walker Reynolds, University of Nevada Oral History Program, 1977.
Creator: Bruce Walker Reynolds Date: 1977Images
