Jackpot, Nevada: A Visitor’s Guide to amenities, attractions and history from The Complete Nevada Traveler
Guide to
Jackpot
Elevation: 4,500 feet
Surrounded by vast mountain
wilderness, Jackpot is a bright cluster
of casinos where US 93 crosses the Idaho-Nevada line. This phenomenal
community some 50 miles south of Twin Falls was the first casino
boomtown in Nevada – after Las Vegas.
Welcome to Jackpot
These businesses are pleased to welcome you
Casino Hotels
CACTUS
PETE’S RESORT CASINO.
Center of Town. 800-821-1103. The hottest table games, wild
new slots, more hand-paid jackpots, more winners than you can
imagine, sizzling entertainment, five dining options, 300 guest
rooms including 26 suites, a deluxe RV Park, Olympic-size swimming
pool and the BIGGEST JACKPOTS make us your “perfect Place
to Play!” AAA-Rated Four Diamond property.
BARTON’S CLUB 93.
Center of Town. 800-258-2937. Barton’s Club 93 sets Jackpot’s
friendly tone. Offering 100 rooms, free RV parking, 24-hour restaurant,
and a fully-equipped casino. The Club 93 prides itself on its
Nevada friendliness and its luscious “Pair-a-Dice”
buffet.
FOUR JACKS HOTEL-CASINO.
Center of Town. 800-251-6313. Friendliest employees in the
casino business. You’ll always be greeted with a smile and treated
as a friend. Receive a “Fun Pack”, and $11 value, with
your hotel room. Our “Steakhouse and Bakery” serves
a “mouth-watering, savory, mesquite-smoked prime rib thast
you will come back for again and again.
HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS.
On the north side, overlooking Jackpot. 800-665-0643. Holiday
Inn Express is the newest hotel in Jackpot. Accommodations provide
extremely competitive rates, free elaborate continental breakfast,
and numerous coupons to use in the intimate Pony Express Casino.
This hotel has 75 smoking and non-smoking rooms and the convenince
of an elevator. Handicap rooms available.
HORSESHU HOTEL & CASINO.
Center of Town. 800-432-0051. Famous for its old west-style
ambiance and hospitality, 110 spacious rooms, 10 jacuzzi suites,
great dining, live entertainment, dancing and thrilling gaming
action with 100 new and exciting interactive slot machines. The
Horseshu is a favorite hitching post for people seeking quality
fun and exciting gaming action at affordable prices.
A brief History & Description
of
Jackpot, Nevada
by
David W. Toll
Here in the
high ranchlands of the Bruneau River country, surrounded
by vast mountain wilderness, you might be surprised at the bright
cluster of casinos where US 93 crosses the Idaho-Nevada line.
This phenomenal community some 50 miles south of Twin Falls was
the first casino boomtown in Nevadaafter Las Vegas.
Jackpot owes its
existence to the presidential ambitions of Senator Estes Kefauver
of Tennessee, who did Nevada a big favor in the early 1950s by
crusading against illegal slot machines around the country. When
slot machines were turned to the wall and poker games closed
down in saloons and club rooms around Idaho, Jackpot was born
as a log cabin full of one-armed bandits just across the Nevada
state line.
It was five years
before Jackpot had its first blackjack game, but today the casinos
here would be right at home in Las Vegas. Cactus Pete’s, the
first and best-known of them is now a major high-rise, with the
Four Jacks, Bartons’s Club 93, a new Holiday Inn Express and
the fabulously conceived (“a combination of a Hollywood
sound stage and a western mining town”) Horseshu.
There are 1,500
permanent residents in Jackpot now, and although the town lacks
the supreme symbol of civilized existence, a cemetery, it does
have a school, a newspaper, a golf course, a magnificent enclosed
swimming pool, tennis courts, over 100 RV spaces and an airport.
And despite being on the Nevada side of the line, Jackpot is
now the largest employer in southern Idaho.
Most of this prosperity
derives from the avalanche of visitors who roar south from Idaho
every weekend, lured as much by the simple pleasure of a good
dinner and the chance to get out of Idaho overnight, as by the
gambling games.
For their benefit
Jackpot sets its clocks to Idaho time, an hour earlier than the
rest of Nevada. Gambling is still the main attraction for the
wintertime sunseekers drifting south out of Canada, and for the
truckers who highball north and south on US 93 at all times of
the year.
Increasingly, though,
visitors are also attracted to Jackpot for the outdoor recreation
available in every direction, from about ten feet out of town
to as far as you can see and beyond.
The Jarbidge Wilderness
Area is in the mountains to the southwest, and the majority of
the state’s record deer have come from this part of the state.
Sage grouse, chukar and pheasant hunting are excellent, and the
fishing is even better. The Little Salmon River and its tributaries
commonly offer up rainbow and brown trout up to four pounds,
with larger fish caught somewhat less frequently. Salmon Falls
reservoir across the line in Idaho, boasts of nine varieties
of game fish including trout, salmon, bass and walleye. The opportunities
for stream, river and lake fishing are essentially limitless.
Jackpot is surely
the busiest town in Nevada, maybe the world, with a year-around
schedule of golf tournaments, air races, skeet shoots, balloon
ascensions and other events both ordinary and exotic. The golf
course is open all year (play is with a green ball in winter).
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