Caliente, Nevada, once a railroad company town

The locals speak Caliente as (cally ANT ee).  So when in Caliente, Nevada do as the Calientans do. 

    It began as a railroad company town.  In 1905, the copper king, William Clark ordered a town to be laid out somewhere along the railroad line he had established connecting Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.  The site had to have plenty of water, not only for the town, but also for the trains.  They chose a site located near Rainbow Canyon, which afforded a perfect route through the mountains to Utah and there was plenty of water in the canyon.  Because the site was also near hot springs, it was named Calientes, which is a variation of the Spanish verb to heat.  Later on the “s” was dropped.

    Arriving in town I drove pass a line of “company row” houses.  Across the street from them stood my kind of funky motel, so I rented a room.  The motel was operated by a kindly, little old lady with long, stringy, white hair, who reminded me of Gravel Gertie, BO Plenty’s wife, minus the bulging eyes.  Those of you who followed the old Dick Tracy cartoon will know just exactly how she looked.  I’ve included a picture of my room, complete with a bedspread I suspect “Gertie” made.     

    I proceeded to make the obligatory photographs of the often-photographed railroad station, which is a lovely mission-style building.  With a broad open space out in front, the station is prominently located, making it the focal point of the town.  The bottom floor was once the station offices, ticket booth and passenger waiting room and the second floor was a hotel.  But that was back in the days when travel by train was the thing to do.  Today it’s houses the city hall, a library and an art gallery.

    Caliente takes on an extra special meaning for me, because it was while drinking a beer in the local saloon, I met the mult-tattooed Talen, who was fresh out of jail after having served an eight year sentence.  He had an engaging personality and we spent a great deal of time in conversation.  He told me what he did that cause him to do time.  It was a bar fight.  If that wasn't bad enough, the other man turned out to be a plain-clothed deputy sheriff.  I suspected that there was more to the story, you don't get eight years for a simple bar fight.  I didn't press him for the details.  He simply said, "He started it and I finished it."  Now he was thumbing his way to Moab in hopes a getting reacquainted with his son who had recently turned eighteen.  "I left him when he was a boy and now that he's a man I don't know how he'll react to his jailbird dad."  His was a heartfelt story of a life gone wrong and of a man not sure of his future.

    And finally this, I have read claims that Caliente was Zane Grey’s favorite place in which to write and that Butch Cassidy once hid out there.  Well, don’t believe everything you read on a website, because according to the Nevada State Archivist, there’s no truth to either claim.

Q