Jedidiah Smoothwater had gone to his reward if he was to have one, which I reckoned was doubtful. He had played his part in this grand comedy with such middling skill that spectators, if any, must have been snoring through his final act. Now, he lay, decked out in a mahogany coffin, glass over his…

Rascals of Tahoe and a Case of Leniency Now, dear reader, let us turn our attention to a tale of crime, justice, and a rather curious brand of leniency that has settled upon the shores of Lake Tahoe like an unwelcome fog. The principal character in this drama is one Edgar Ivan Trejo-Mendoza, a man…

Norm Clarke Norm Clarke had the instincts of a bloodhound, the nerves of a riverboat gambler, and, lest we forget, the unmistakable eye patch that made him look as though he had just stepped off a pirate ship and straight into a press room. It was not merely an accessory; it was the badge of…

A Tale of Fraud, Fines, and Foolishness Some men will climb the highest mountain, ford the deepest river, and perjure themselves on a stack of Bibles to bag a mule deer that isn’t legally theirs. Such was the case in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, where two enterprising individuals got snared by the long arm of…

Lombardo Wants Firefighters for Lithium Infernos If there’s one thing folks can count on in Nevada besides a casino taking their last dollar, it’s a fire hotter than the hinges of Hades whenever something with lithium catches aflame. A man with a firm handshake and an even firmer grasp on the obvious, Governor Joe Lombardo,…

A Fight for Justice in Care Homes Now, friends, we all know the world is brimming with fine speeches and noble intentions, but when it comes to our most vulnerable—our elders and those in need of care—it seems some folks operate with all the compassion of a hungry coyote. Many well-meaning family have entrusted their…

Nevada’s Next Great Boom and Bust If the ghosts of Nevada’s silver miners were still rattling around the canyons, they’d be scratching their spectral heads, wondering what all the fuss is about a metal you can’t even use for a belt buckle. Yet here we are, in the throes of another grand mineral scramble, this…

Iraq, November 2004, and I was covering the Second Battle of Fallujah as a Department of Defense stringer. My job was to take photographs, collect names, and write stories. I wasn’t there to fight. I followed a squad of Marines into a half-finished two-story house in Jolan, a rough neighborhood in an even harder city.…

It appears that another one of the infernal metal slabs has planted itself right in the middle of Nevada, like a misplaced tombstone for common sense. The latest offender, a 12-foot contraption, sprang up overnight at Seven Magic Mountains, confounding respectable folk and alarming the Nevada Museum of Art, who had no more say than…

Ford and Lombardo Square Off If there’s one thing about Nevada politics, a quiet day is as likely as snow in the desert—possible, but only under the most peculiar circumstances. And last month, when Attorney General Aaron Ford released his 72-page tome of “model immigration policies,” it set off a political scuffle that will likely…