I did this interview of Nevada Ghost Town author Stanley Paher for an issue of Nevada in the West Magazine last year.  They are great folks, and performing a magnificent service for lovers of Nevada and Western history.  You can read a full review of their four issues to date in the forthcoming issue of the Nevada Review.  And you can go to their website to learn more about them here.

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Stanley W. Paher is a self-described “desert rat,” or one who glories and prospers within the desert climates of Nevada, California, Arizona and other western states.  Since the early 1950s it was his dream to catalog the many homesteads, encampments, and towns of the early Nevada settlers, and in 1970 he achieved his goal with the publication of Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps. Since its publication, Stanley has continued to write and collect on Nevada, authored several bestsellers, and become one of the primary publishers and distributors of books on Nevada’s mining history.  He sat down for an interview with Caleb S. Cage of the Nevada Review in May of this year.

CSC: Stanley, you are from Nevada, is that correct?

SWP: Native Nevadan.  Native Las Vegan.

CSC: How did your family come to Nevada?

SWP: My father, in 1930-1931, was working in Flint, Michigan as an upholsterer.  He and my grandfather decided to go in an automobile to see the new Hoover Dam being built.  When they got into Las Vegas they noted that there was business opportunity.  Then they went through California and back up through Battle Mountain.  At Battle Mountain they noticed that this one guy had a small auto court, eight units.  My dad said to his dad, “Dad, we ought to go back to Michigan, pack up, and go back to Las Vegas and establish an auto court,” now known as motels.  It was a success right from the start because the units were filled continuously for four years until the completion of the Boulder Dam, now named Hoover Dam, in 1935.

CSC: So you are born a little bit later on in Las Vegas

SWP: In 1940 in a house right across from the Clark County Courthouse, a beautiful DeLongchamps building built around the 19-teens - in a house which is now in the Golden Nugget parking lot.  So, I’ve got to pay $1.25 just to see my birthplace.

CSC: What was growing up in Las Vegas like in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s?

SWP: It was a great life, it really was nice.  My mother drove us to school, about five blocks from the corner of Las Vegas and Charleston down to 5^th Street Grammar, the grammar school in those days.  There was only the one high school, of course.  Then later on we were old enough to walk to school and walk back.  It was a nice life.  Las Vegas was then about 20,000 people.  The 1950 census was 24,000.  It was relatively free of crime.  The town was steadily growing because by 1960 it had 64,000 people.  It was pleasant; just a down-home town, like anywhere across America.  There was some gaming downtown.  By 1950 three hotels on the Strip: the El Rancho, the Last Frontier, and Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo.  But that was another part of town that we never associated with.  But by 1950 my father and grandfather’s motel was up to 45 units and it was doing good.  Of course by 1954 I was entering Las Vegas High School, the only high school in the whole valley.  But even then high school was rather pleasant.

CSC: It sounds like you had a pretty idyllic childhood growing up in the city.

SWP: Absolutely.  I just cherish those days, they were very nice.

CSC: So how did you become a “desert rat” if you enjoyed the city so much?

SWP: Well, in the mid-‘50s, I was always interested in general history.  But, Nell Murbarger wrote a book called Ghosts of the Glory Trail, and when that book came out, I was hooked on going to seeing ghost towns.  We started a ghost-towning club at Las Vegas High School.  We were going out at least two to three weekends a month, through the spring and summer and fall.  I started taking notes and taking pictures.  I still have a lot of those pictures.  Before 1960 I probably had 1,500 slides and black and whites on Nevada.

CSC: And you went on to the university after high school?

SWP: No, in high school I was not in any condition to go to college—too many ghost-towning trips.  I went into the service just to grow up and took classes at night.  I went back east to school at first, but by my junior year I was at Sacramento State.  I graduated from Sacramento State and then came up here to the University of Nevada, 1966-1970 to get a Masters in Political Science.

CSC: Did you know that you wanted to be a writer at the time?

SWP: I only had the one dream, and that was to write that one ghost town book, the 1970 Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps.  It was an instant hit.  The first edition sold out in five weeks.  That first book led to me establishing Nevada Publications, so I became more than a writer.  I was an author, publisher, and then finally a distributor, publishing these 120 books or so by myself and other authors.  The book business has been my mistress.

CSC: Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps was picked up by a press out of California, right?

SWP: That’s right. Howell-North Books.

CSC: You didn’t renew with them because Nevada Publications has carried it since, is that correct?

SWP: Well, right after that book came out, I had seven chapters left over: Eastern California, Northwest Arizona.  So I published these as separate books, and they did well.  And Death Valley Ghost Towns in ’72-’73 did well.  In 1971, I did a book on Las Vegas, As it Began, As it Grew, it’s called, and those all did well.  And finally, the bicentennial book in 1976.  All of them were smashing successes.  But since then until the ‘90s, I didn’t have any real good success on any book.  In 1981 I was making money in real estate, but the book business for the five years previous was doing okay…. I did well because I was selling copies of Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps retail and had my own little distribution network.  But by then, the publisher (Howell-North) said, “We’re going to allow this book to go out of print for six months.”  I said, “Well, can I buy it, because I’d like to keep it in print?”  By then I knew all of the ropes about publishing, marketing, distribution.  So, they said, “Come on down to San Diego and we’ll talk about it.”  So, in 1981 I went down there, and they said if I bought the rights to Comstock Mining and Miners, Mining Camps Days, and Thompson and West (History of Nevada, 1881) and the inventory to all of those, they’d let me have it.  I’ve kept those books in print ever since.  Finally in 1992 I came up with the idea for a companion atlas to the ghost town book, and that one has been a great seller, just like the ‘70s.  That book has been through seven printings, the atlas.

CSC: And each one of those has improved in some ways.  How is the latest one different?

SWP: Well, it started out as two-color maps, kind of gold and black with pictures.  The newest, seventh edition we’re up to 71 maps instead of just 55 and 550 pictures and the maps are in full color.

CSC: What is the book market for Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps?

SWP: Well, back in the ‘70s, it was very distinct and that is why it succeeded so well: old time Nevadans, old time families, people that love these pictures.  Because I showed mining camps as they were, it appealed to people that like to go out and see ghost towns.  Now, the market is shrunk badly.  Where I used to sell 1,000-1,500 copies a year, even five years ago, it’s down to 500 copies a year.  The book is dying.  The printing occurring this month will probably be the last printing.

CSC: What do you think is the future of writing Nevada’s history?  Is there a younger generation that would be interested in this?

SWP: I think far less, but I taught a little seminar at the University of Nevada and the room was filled with prospective writers.  But they were more than just people who were interested in writing on the history of Nevada.  There are bigger themes now: economics, politics, general natural history, and stuff like that.  That will continue to grow.  But the ghost town market, I’ve pretty much had a legalized monopoly over all of these years.

CSC: Can you tell us a bit about your book and photography collection?

SWP: I started the book collection in 1958 when I was on one of these trips from Las Vegas, coming up ghost-towning.  I went into Graham Hardy’s Country Store and I bought a book called Gold in Them Hills. Then I collected books over the years, traded with other collectors, antiquarian bookstores were plentiful in those days in ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s.  I collected books over all of those years.  I probably had 1,800 different Nevada books before 1980.  That’s the first part.  The second part would be collectibles on Nevada: stock certificates, photographs, things like that.  I’ve got more than 60 Nevada Territorial stock certificates and over14,000 photographs.  I only collect things made of paper.

CSC: So tell us about the growth of this 14,000 photograph picture collection.

SWP: Well a lot of it is the Nell Murbarger collection.  That consisted of about 11,000 pieces, but only about 5,000 are of Nevada.  Plus some color photographs she took in the ‘50s and ‘60s.  It’s an amazing collection.  It’s just so cool to look at those old photographs and see how things were.  They are just a delight.  It’s almost like a pilgrimage into the past just to sift through all of those photographs.

CSC: Do you have any Nevada books in the future?

SWP: No I don’t.  I will continue to revise the ghost town atlas, and every time I revise it takes several months.  I’ve already got several things to add to the eighth edition.  But I want to spend my time going out in the desert and just to explore.  I run at least four or five times a week just to stay in shape so that I can do the hikes with younger kids.  And I can still out-hike them. There are people like Guy Rocha and Patty Cafferatta that are keeping this up.  But it’s not like it was 30 or 40 years ago.  I just want to work part time and keep up with the book distribution.  I would say that there will be more history books coming out, but still there will be more modern themes, and that’s good.  After all, Nevada has 2.5 million people now, we’ve got to be concerned about good government, good economics, and a good budget for the state.  We’ve got to be somewhat concerned about the environment.  There will be more guidebooks for people to enjoy the desert.  There’re always new things coming out.