The Strange Tale of Whiskey Pete

right now we're in Prim Nevada on the California Nevada border and today we're going to be talking about the strange tale of whiskey Pete [Music] so where we're at right now used to be called state line but then they later changed the name to Prim to avoid confusion with the town of state line that's at Lake Tahoe but right behind me is Whiskey Pete's hotel and casino now when I talk about the strange tale of whiskey Pete I'm not talking about the strange tale of Whiskey Pete's Casino I'm talking about a man that was named whiskey Pete McIntyre who the casino happens to be named after but this guy was quite a character and when I first heard this story I actually didn't believe it but then doing some research into it it's actually true and this story gets pretty crazy so let's walk over to the casino I think they have a statue of him in there or something and see if we can find it also Bonnie and Clyde's death cars in there so let's take a look at that real quick as well and let's talk about whiskey Pete McIntyre I guess I should probably say a little about Prim first hundreds of thousands of cars drive past Prim every day heading between Las Vegas and Southern California but I think very few actually stop here Prim basically consists of three casinos of which only two are open as of the filming of this video and a few gas stations and shops though one gas station does have a pretty magnificent fountain not a lot of people realize this but Prim is also where Las Vegas Boulevard starts this was formerly part of Highway 91 but you can jump on the road here avoid the interstate and about 41 miles later you're at Caesar's Palace before the 1970s though state line was a pretty empty place and that brings us back to Whiskey Pete so whiskey Pete owned and operated a service station here at Stateline in the late 1920s early 1930s and I've never actually seen a picture of him so I have no idea if he looks like the cartoon character they use as a logo here at the hotel and casino but a little bit more on the backstory of whiskey Pete he was born about 1880 and the first time he kind of shows up in the record was in 1918 he was arrested in California for a blind pig which is running a speakeasy and then in 1922 he was arrested here in Nevada for bootlegging sometime in the 1920s he got his service station here and that's where things started to get a little bit more crazy Whiskey Pete's hotel and casino was built in 1977 and while the outside looks like a castle inside there's an Old West theme also we just learned that the Bonnie and Clyde car has been moved across the freeway to the prim Valley Resort but here's the casino's display on their namesake now I love roadside history and learning about the characters you'd come across on our early highways and whiskey Pete was a character by the late 1920s Pete was making a name for himself with his service station but not in a good way a newspaper report in 1928 said that a woman stopped at Whiskey Pete station at about 11 pm one night whiskey Pete came out to serve her and when he found out that the car only needed water he became abusive and threatening and refused to let her have water he forced the woman to drive to the next service station with an empty radiator and an overheated engine the Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas said that for months they had received similar complaints from tourists driving to and from Las Vegas to California one of the complaints said that whiskey Pete shot at them and another said he threatened to shoot them then in 1931 a Nevada postmaster named rube Bradshaw stopped at Pete's service station for gas and left with a bullet wound apparently there was an argument over Bradshaw asking for a cup of coffee Bradshaw went to leave and Pete called him a quote unquote vile name when Bradshaw turned around to face him Peach shot him in the shoulder Pete was charged with assault with a deadly weapon but the charges were later dropped when Bradshaw never showed up to court in early 1932 Pete got married and by October his wife was trying to get out of it charging whiskey Pete with Insanity she told the court that Pete would fly into fits of rage and he responded who wouldn't when they find their wife running around naked in the hills with other men whiskey Pete had spent some time at Stillwell sanitarium in Banning California and he died there on November 11 1933. [Music] but this isn't where his story ends whiskey Pete wasn't done with this place yet Destiny ain't nothing to be waiting for it's a thing to be achieved now go out and make your destiny cow Pope but before you leave me fish around in your pocket and grab some of them sweaty gold or silver pieces either one will do thank you we moved a little north of the casino closer to where Whiskey Pete's service station would have been it actually would have been over this way a little bit where Interstate 15 is now but before whiskey Pete died he told some of his friends bury me standing up up on the hill overlooking the valley so I could watch all those sons of going by and that's what they did there was a picture out there that supposedly shows his grave but the hills have been so torn up through here it's hard to place it and I don't know the source on it so I can't guarantee it's actually a picture of his grave whatever his grave looked like though people kept stealing his grave marker and eventually the location of the Grave was lost [Music] so you could probably see where this is going but on February 2nd 1994 workers that were building this Tramway between Buffalo Bills on the other side of the freeway and Whiskey Pete's Casino struck something and the next thing they knew there was Whiskey Pete's skull looking up at them so the legend was that whiskey Pete was buried with a bottle of his moonshine and his gun in his hand but when they dug him up they didn't actually find that there was a little bit of hair left a few buttons from his shirt and that was it [Music] after he was dug up the casino said that whiskey Pete would be reburied on the property with a memorial but no Memorial was ever built and it's unknown where his remains are currently located rumor has it that he was reburied in the Hills behind me back in one of the caves where he used to make his moonshine so that's our look at the strange tale of whiskey Pete thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up consider subscribing and we'll see you next week

Channel: Sidetrack Adventures

Views: 17,460

Keywords: Whiskey Pete, Whiskey Pete's, Primm, Primm Nevada, Nevada history, Interstate 15, Nevada legends, Las Vegas attractions, things to see on the drive to Las Vegas

Id: f5F8FBPsS2Y

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2022