Introduction

Once Upon a Time in RENO

by Peggy Wynne Borgman

 

Imagine that you’re an American woman who’s had enough of your cheating husband. You’re ready to leave. But this is the 1930s. And that means, in almost every state in the Union, that unless he “gives” you a divorce, you’re stuck.

Nevada to the rescue.

In 1931, in the jaws of the Great Depressions and with the glory days of the gold and silver booms behind it, Nevada’s all-male legislature passed two laws that dramatically changed the fortunes of the Silver State. One of them also changed the fortunes of divorce-seeking people—especially women—for decades.

Wanted: Residents

Nevada has a storied history of accidentally enabling social change in the pursuit of filthy lucre. Back in the 1860s, the territory lacked the population necessary to qualify as a state. But thanks to a massive silver and gold strike on the Comstock Lode, when migrant fortune hunters left old lives—and wives—behind, li’l Nevada was invited into the Union, in time to help out with the Civil War chest. After the war, Nevada State courts established a six-month residency period for a divorce. A miner got divorced, became a Nevada citizen, and was conveniently added to the voting and tax rolls.

Fast forward to the Depression, when Las Vegas was still just a wide spot in the road. Reno, in Northern Nevada, had been in the “migratory divorce” racket since the early 1900s, offering legal residency at just three months, down from the original six. The lenient residency law had been incentive enough to lure wealthy (and just plain desperate) people to the state for what gossip king Walter Winchell famously dubbed a “Reno-vation.”

Divorce in don’t-fence-me-in Nevada was already easier to get than most other states. Until well into the twentieth century, some states made it almost impossible for couples to divorce. In South Carolina, divorce for any reason was prohibited from 1878 to 1949. In New York, the divorce law sponsored by Alexander Hamilton in 1787 that recognized adultery as the only ground for divorce remained in force until 1967. Most states required divorcing couples to be residents for at least a year; Connecticut demanded three years.

But in Nevada, there were nine legal justifications you could claim, including (your spouse’s) impotence, insanity, abandonment, felonious crimes, “adultery, remaining unforgiven,” “gross drunkenness” (which suggests there is such a thing as ungross drunkenness), living apart for three years, neglect to provide the necessities of life, and—the most popular—extreme cruelty, entirely mental in nature. None required proof.

So the Nevada legislature, meeting in 1931, decided to spur more tourism to the mostly-empty, mostly-desert state, whose population still numbered less than 100,000 people. They legalized casino gambling. The “Wide-Open Gambling Law” of 1931 pretty much said it all.

Rolling the Dice on Divorce

Lawmakers also reduced the residency requirement for divorce to a scandalously scant six weeks. Other states howled, and legal challenges flew. The Supreme Court backed Nevada.

The nation was shocked. Moralists criticized Nevada and spoke of threats to family life. In 1931, the Minnesota publishers of The Reno Divorce Racket assured their readers that “Reno’s hysterical scramble for divorce, their mad race for sex freedom and return to paganism is a transitory phase. It will pass.”

Reno businessmen were concerned about their bottom line. Would the shorter residency increase the divorce traffic sufficiently to compensate for the shorter stay? George Wingfield, owner of the Riverside Hotel, saw the six-week residency as increasing the volume of divorce trade and thus increasing the bottom line for his and other businesses. Wingfield also pointed out that a few other states were considering a shorter residency requirement and urged Nevada to do it first.

The new six-week residency requirement was like pouring gasoline on a fire. Overnight, an affordable Nevada divorce was in the reach of thousands of Americans. Divorce tourism exploded. Women and men flocked to Nevada. Reno was the undisputed “Divorce Capital” of the United States.

Establishing residency, however, was not as simple as showing up. Your witness had to swear to the court that they’d seen you in Nevada once per each 24-hour day, for the entire six weeks. Lying about that (aka perjury) was a serious crime. So no matter how frisky and free a divorce seeker might feel, they had to show their face at least once a day to their host, landlord, or hotel manager.

You also had to state to the court that you “intended to remain” in the Silver State, a wink-wink fiction perpetuated by foreign nationals, Hollywood stars and Eastern bigwigs. And some freshly divorced people actually did remain, falling in love with gorgeous Lake Tahoe, the stunning high-desert scenery, or each other.

Just a few weeks after the new six-week law went into effect, itinerant divorce seekers-in-waiting overwhelmed Reno’s boardinghouses, motels, and swanky new downtown hotels. People even camped out along the Truckee River. The posh Riverside Hotel, the Mapes, and the El Cortez, were built (or rebuilt) to capitalize on the divorce boom. Modern, multistory apartment buildings went up.

Private homeowners rented out rooms and sometimes their entire homes (occasionally returning to find them completely redecorated, in high style).

High Desert High Life

If you’ve ever wondered why Reno is called “The Biggest Little City in the World,” we have divorce to thank. The “divorce colony” brought a flood of fancy-schmancy amenities to the high-desert city, which was located close to major rail lines and newly completed highways

Department stores in Reno did their buying in New York and Paris. Hotels imported famous chefs. Theaters and nightclubs showcased world-famous entertainers. Basically, Reno was Las Vegas before Las Vegas was Las Vegas. (Imagine how much dough you’d drop if you had to stay there for six weeks.)

Gossip blew through town like the desert wind. Casinos, nightclubs, restaurants, bars, and lobbies were staked out by nosy reporters from most of the major newspapers in the U.S., hoping to catch glimpses of famous folk in flagrante divorce-o. Bribes flowed freely to bellhops, maids, and waiters willing to spill the beans.

The details of breakups and settlements, thanks to another change in the divorce law, were now fair game for gossip columnists. (Gossip columns were the original social media. Americans read Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell breathlessly.)

Rita Hayworth ditched her hubs the Aly Khan in Reno. So did Myrna Loy and burlesque legend Gypsy Rose Lee. General Douglas MacArthur, Norman Rockwell, mobster Bugsy Siegel, and playwright Arthur Miller also came to Reno for their divorces. (Arthur Miller wrote a screenplay based on his experience in Reno, The Misfits, starring his new wife, Marilyn Monroe—the last film she completed.)

But the biggest impact on America was the sudden availability of divorce to everyday folks, and thousands of them passed through the state on their way to new (and hopefully happier) lives.

Divorce hotels catered to waves of solo female guests, a new phenomenon in hospitality. They offered features like the women-only ladies card room and lounge on the mezzanine of the El Cortez lobby. After all, it wasn’t just the gossip columnists chasing women down. Plenty of them were being hunted by private dicks, and not-so-private dicks—angry husbands.

The Ultimate Hideouts Were the Divorce Ranches

These were the most glamorous, exclusive, and discreet hostelries for the free-spending divorce seeker. The most exclusive of the divorce ranches was the Flying M E, a converted stage-stop hotel located in Washoe Valley’s once-booming burg of Franktown. The Flying M E was gussied up in a manner that would look more familiar to the Virginia horsey set than Kit Carson. There was even a swimming pool. During the quieter winter months, the cold-hardy divorcée-in-waiting could ski her way through her six-week Nevada residency.

Ironically, the married proprietors of the Flying M E divorce ranch, Emmy and Dore Wood, got divorced themselves when one of their guests (perhaps a “dirty little trollop”) spirited off Dore. Divorce ranches became summer camps for the unhappily married rich and famous.

Other top divorce ranches in the area were the Washoe Pines Ranch, two miles from the Flying M E; the Pyramid Lake Ranch in remote Sutcliffe; and the Donner Trail Ranch in Verdi (Nevadans pronounce it “VERD-eye”).

Divorce ranches attracted well-heeled society women from the East, a budding class of successful “career women,” and Hollywood stars bright and dim. There were some male guests, too, but they were outnumbered. Most divorce ranches functioned as mini-matriarchies.

To play cowgirl or boy for a few weeks, out of sight and out of reach of your soon-to-be-ex spouse, you’d fork over the at-the-time astonishing sum of close to $600 per month for room and board. A divorce ranch was literally the high-priced spread.

These intimate hostelries housed between ten and twenty guests, who sometimes doubled up in snug knotty pine rooms and cabins. Dinners were taken in a communal dining room, family style, and preceded by long cocktail hours in the parlor.

Your first stop, as an Eastern dude arriving in Reno, was Parker’s, a well-known Western wear store, where you would buy your cowpoke regalia, including “frontier” pants, Western shirts with yokes and pearl snaps, and of course, cowboy boots and hats. Northern Nevada’s rustic, laid-back atmosphere (not to mention the wind) encouraged you to let down your hair. In addition, you got to ditch your makeup and wear pants every day. (A woman wearing a dress was a woman headed to an appointment with her attorney, or off to her day in court.)

The staff of the divorce ranches would drive you to those appointments, to the beautician, and even to the ubiquitous Nevada pawn shops to unload your jewelry. (Going pawn shopping is still a popular retail sport here.) In the evening, you’d join a carload of women and might be ferried to the state capital of Carson City to gamble and carouse. If you were a sheltered blue-blooded gal, it might be the first time in your life you did either.

But the highlight of your stay, if you were like many of the guests, was the very thing you came to Nevada to shed: men. The ranches were staffed with wranglers—hunky cowboys who led trail rides and campouts; they took guests hunting and taught them to ride. The most sought-after dude wranglers of the divorce ranches were a combination of riding instructor, veterinarian, handyman, psychologist, tour guide, meteorologist, historian, and sometimes, gigolo.

Women came to Nevada to be liberated, literally, from unhappy marriages. In the 30s and 40s, it was the first place that many of these women born in the nineteenth century were free to have sexual experiences on their own terms.

Naturally, not every guest was up for a roll in the hay with a dude wrangler. Many divorce seekers even showed up in Nevada with a “spare,” the person they intended to marry the minute their divorce was final. This was facilitated by another Nevada law—the ability to remarry immediately following the divorce decree. Most other states enforced a “waiting period” of up to a year—some still do.

Occasionally, the cowboys themselves got hitched to newly single and wealthy women. Many of these relationships dissolved as quickly as they began, but a number of women, reveling in the freedom and opportunity of their strange new state, bought ranches and set their cow-spouses up in the cattle business.

Eastern blue bloods tended (and purchased) bars in Virginia City, where a whole post-divorce expat community of bohemians and literati partied hard in the years after World War II.

When it was time to “graduate,” (Reno slang for receiving your divorce decree) the tradition was to head down the granite steps of the Washoe County Courthouse, take the block-long walk to the Truckee River, and toss your wedding ring into the fast-moving water. Most people threw fake rings, having long since pawned the real ones.

The heyday of the Nevada divorce spanned the 1930s to 1960s, though it wasn’t until 1942 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled all states had to recognize divorces granted in Nevada.

Divorce Grows Up

But, in keeping with the state’s tradition of boom-and-bust, the end eventually came. Divorce laws throughout the country slowly changed to the modern, “no fault” model. By the 1970s, with the sexual revolution in full swing (ahem), Nevada divorce was as much of an anachronism as the girdle.

But the gambling boom, ushered in the same year as the six-week divorce, raged on. Las Vegas, thanks to its proximity to Los Angeles, surpassed Reno as Nevada’s glitzy gambling mecca. The Biggest Little City became Nevada’s Second City.

Not every divorcée had fond memories of her “Reno-vation.” At the end of the day, winning your freedom could still be a depressing and stressful affair. But many returned. They’d discovered romance here—they fell in love with Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada. (And probably pants.)

The Divorce Seekers is a chronicle of this forgotten period in American history, much of it told through the eyes of a former dude wrangler, the late William L. “Bill” McGee, who worked on one of the most illustrious of the ranches, the Flying M E, as a young veteran of World War II.

Driving through the Washoe Valley today, there’s little evidence of these rustic resorts, though cattle still graze in the lush pastures of vanity ranches. Just minutes to the north, Reno has exploded as a twenty-first century hub of high technology, with companies like Tesla staking their claim on the high desert in the country’s biggest industrial park. Geothermal plants dot the hillsides. Housing developments sprawl in every direction.

But in spite of this, there’s something weirdly timeless about the region. Virginia City continues to fascinate visitors as one of the best-preserved mining boomtowns in the country. Bordellos are still legal in certain rural counties. No strip mall in Nevada is complete without its own neighborhood casino, and slot machines beckon near the check stands of supermarkets. Men swagger into Starbucks with holstered sidearms, hoping to evoke Old West gunslingers. The heyday of Nevada divorce may be over, but the “don’t fence me in” spirit of Nevada, (a highly contagious spirit, I might add) is alive and well.

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Peggy Wynne Borgman is the author of The Better Half, A Novel of the Nevada Divorce Ranch Era. Peggy and her husband live in Northern Nevada.