Published: August 02, 2007 06:06 pm            

A wide spot of sin in the road

By Nicholas K. Geranios

JACKPOT, Nevada (AP) — You won’t see the ‘‘Ocean’s Thirteen’’ guys hanging around Cactus Pete’s.

This is about as far from the Las Vegas Strip as you can get and still be gambling in Nevada.

But Jackpot, a collection of casinos and gas stations located on the Nevada-Idaho line, has its charms. Stakes are low, the slots pay pretty well, and the food at Cactus Pete’s is pretty good.

If you have to drive solo from Spokane, Wash., to St. George, Utah, as I recently did, a night at this wide spot of sin in the road is good for a break.

You get to Jackpot by taking a right off Interstate 84 at Twin Falls, Idaho, (yes, it’s an actual city, not just the name of a movie) and driving about 50 miles south on Highway 93.

There’s not a lot to see besides potato fields in the high desert until you round a bend in the road and the improbable 10-story tower of Cactus Pete’s appears below you as you drop down into Jackpot.



Living on Jackpot time

Jackpot, which has six casinos and a population of about 1,500, was founded in 1954 after Idaho outlawed casino gaming.

Knowing that Gem Staters would still like to place bets, ‘‘Cactus Pete’’ Piersanti and Don French moved their slot machine operations to the Jackpot site, opening Cactus Pete’s and the Horseshu Club. Cactus Pete’s took over the Horseshu in 1964.

A handful of other casinos have followed, and Jackpot is now the biggest single employer of Idahoans from the Twin Falls area.

Because of that, Jackpot observes Mountain Time, while most of Nevada is on Pacific Time.



Hitting the jackpot

Exhausted after a 10-hour day of driving, I checked into a $59-a-night room at Cactus Pete’s that was clean and large, with a king-size bed and a nice view of the arid mountains surrounding this mile-high town.

There’s a large outdoor pool and a concert arena in the parking lot.

But I wasn’t there for music or swimming. I was there to gamble.

Needing to fuel up first, I went to one of the five restaurants at Cactus Pete’s, a casual dining spot called the Desert Room. It was half-price Wednesday, so I got a slab of ribs, a beer and a piece of pie for $11.

Then it was out to the casino. I lit up a cigar and sat in front of a 25-cent slot machine. I quickly ran up some winnings before losing my initial $20 stake.

At Cactus Pete’s, the slots are coinless, meaning they accept bills and print out tickets that can be redeemed for cash.

I moved around to a few other machines, playing nothing that cost more than $1 for a bet (hey, I’m a journalist, not a Wall Street executive).

There were plenty of table games, but I was too tired to concentrate on those. However, the minimum bets of $3 or so for a hand of blackjack are much lower than you would find on the Strip these days. There’s also a sports book.

I bought a Corona for $3.75 and dropped $5 into a penny slot machine, wanting a place to concentrate on my cigar while still engaging with bells and whistles. Next to me was an elderly woman tethered to a slot machine with a casino club card. It looked for all the world like she was deriving life support from the machine (as I was). She was also winning a lot more than I was.

My fellow patrons seemed to be locals, the RV crowd and travelers like myself. There weren’t too many higher rollers that I could see, but plenty of people who looked like they had stepped out of ‘‘Napoleon Dynamite.’’



Leaving Jackpot

The next morning, I went down to breakfast, passing some tables where people were smoking and drinking beer even though it wasn’t yet 8 a.m. (they immediately became my role models).

I gassed up in Jackpot (which cost more than I spent in the slots) and then drove two hours across the high desert to Wendover, Nev., on the Utah border. Here the casinos were glitzier and bigger, and there were more of them, since Salt Lake City is only 100 miles east. But they didn’t pay out much during my brief stay, so I cut my losses, climbed into my rental pickup truck and headed for St. George.

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asap contributor Nicholas Geranios is the AP correspondent in Spokane, Wash.

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