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Searchlight is a small town that stood along the road to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. In 1897 the first claim was filed by a name named George Colton which later was called the Duplex Mine. It did not take very long for the town to boom as the year 1900 the Quartette Mine was opened producing nearly half of the areas total outpout and gold was a big commodity surrounding the town. Some of the Coltons are buried in the local cemetery and even today one of them is the towns justice of the peace.

In 1902 a 16 mile narrow gauge railroad was built down the hill to the companys mill on the Colorado River. I did seen some leftover signs of the railroad in the mining district which no longer exist. However one could imagine that even the local townsfolk took this train whenever they wanted a nice ride on up to the river for the day.

The town has its highlights in history as it does tragedies. One of those tragedies would take place close to downtown when a Naval Aircraft on a training mission for the Vietnam War went down. The aircraft was a P3-A Orion which took the lives of 10 men. Their were locals who claimed that to have seen a lightening flash amongst the dark clouds then after the strike the sky rained fiery debris out into an open area of the desert. Nobody knows what caused the tragedy although some have theorized the plane was struck by lightening but the real scientific question is that could a lightening strike cause a plane to burst into not just flames but small pieces? Which is why I believe that the P3-Orion may have crashed with a UFO. I have captured UFOs on camera in this area and have brought others with me who have claimed to have witnessed them over the Searchlight area. Not to far away is a place called Spirit Mountain also known to be the site of ancient astronauts! Strangely right before the plane bleeped off the radar grid the pilot tried to radio in a request at 14,000 feet nobody however knows what exactly was said or has kept a lid on it for now over 30 years.

The post office was opened in 1898 here and by 1907 the town was at its peak. In 1907 during that boom another railroad was put in that connected to the main Santa Fe Line from Needles to Mojave. Most of the residents who came to the area came here for its gold but when people often study wild west history then they will know that many colorful individuals resided here such as John Macready, James Cashman, U.S. Senator Harry Reid, Rex Bell and so many more. Hell even a song called the Searchlight Rag was composed by a Scott Joplin who was fascinated with the town but never resided here.

Searchlight at one time was a bustling mining town with over 1,500 people living here it was larger then even Las Vegas. In 1906 their were over 300 claims. Most of the mines contained Silver and Gold. Sadly the silver and gold production cost went up but the grade of ore went down so the town went from almost 2,000 at one time to nearly 50 in 1927 leaving mostly everything to abandonment.

Not to mention the fact that the railroad only ran twice a week and when a washout occurred in 1923 the train tracks were never repaired and that is where the railroad would die. No railroad meant no more booms of travelers nor shipping versus recieving which would smother this town eventually. In 1927 Rte. 91 was built which bypassed Searchlight which also caused the towns growth to diminish so as you can see it was not just the railroad that caused its decline but general alternative routes that were growing across the states.

At one time the town had searchlights on its hills this would be for travlers to indulge at some of its brothels which also were some of the last locations that had legalized prostitution. Travelers could see the searchlights from miles away and knew that this was their calling if they were looking for a little female company.

Today the town of Searchlight remains fairly quiet with an estimated 700 to 1000 residents. Most of the individuals here are retired older residents but some of the other ones are ranchers, miners and small business owners. The town also serves as an gateway to the Lake Mojave and of course when Hoover Dam was built just up the river Searchlight boomed again briefly due to this factor. The town even boast a small airport and trading post which has many rare interesting items. Lets not forget the Tea Party which came here in March of 2010 the article for that is also below.

At one time their was a few graves surrounding the downtown sidewalks but today they no longer are there perhaps vandals or the elements but another source claims that they were graded over. But one grave I set out to look for was a lady with the last name Wheatley which sparked my investigation into the Searchlight area. We never found any of the graves that once stood near the post office but we did seen some scattered abandonements throughout the town and we literally did hike all over town to fully absorb the history that surrounds this gem.

Not to far away from Searchlight is El Dorado Canyon's ghost town of Nelson which is where the wildwest was truly born and so if you liked the updates from those locations your going to love our tour of Searchlight. Below is an in depth article from the local newspaper about searchlight. The editor did a great job describing Searchlight in depth so I thought I would share it with our viewers.

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Lake Mojave's Cottonwood Cove Just Outside Of Searchlight

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A Bright Spot in the Desert

Visions of gold in the Lost Dutchman Mine led an independent pipe-smoking speculator to a dusty ridge where he found enough ore to strike it rich in Searchlight.

BY K.J. EVANS
Review-Journal


George Frederick Colton went looking for the Lost Dutchman mine, but instead found his fortune in Searchlight. How he made the discovery and how the town got its name are the stuff of legend and speculation.
Colton was born Nov. 22, 1862, in Provo, Utah, and grew up to marry Matilda Bybee in Brigham City, Utah, in May 1883.

Gale Colton, his granddaughter, says he was on his way from Utah to Arizona in the late 1890s, bound for the Superstition Mountains, where he hoped to locate the legendary Lost Dutchman Mine.
There had been extensive prospecting and mining along the lower Colorado River since the arrival of the Spanish in the 18th century. Most of the activity was centered in Eldorado Canyon, about 20 miles from current-day Searchlight.

In May 1897, Colton located a promising ledge of ore on the top of a hill. A few yards away, he found a second outcropping. Thus, the claim was dubbed the Duplex. Its ore yielded 72 ounces of gold per ton. The Searchlight mining district was created the following year.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a Searchlight native and author of the only comprehensive history of his hometown, observed, "The development of Searchlight came at an opportune time in the history of Nevada, since the Comstock Lode was all but exhausted by the time Colton struck gold in 1897. The shipment of ore from the Searchlight District followed a 20-year slump in Nevada mining and gave the state increased visibility nationwide."
As for George Colton, he didn't have much to say about his find. In fact, his family knows very little about him.

Colton was a fiercely independent and close-mouthed man, who tended to his own business and was annoyed with people who tried to mind his.

"When Dun & Bradstreet asked for a report on the Duplex," says Gale Colton, "He said, 'My property is not for sale; I'm not promoting it and not asking for anyone to invest in it, so whatever it's worth is my business and none of yours.' He talked to nobody; he gave no interviews."

When, in 1907, the movement to divide Lincoln County began to gain momentum, George Colton opposed it. Stanton Colton, his great-grandson and former Clark County registrar of voters, thinks it was because the county seat, with its meddlesome officials, was 250 miles away in Pioche, and Colton preferred it that way.
At that time, according to Reid, Searchlight had twice as many registered voters as did Las Vegas, and on that basis was a likely candidate to become the seat of the new county. But by the time the division was accomplished in 1909, Las Vegas had surpassed Searchlight's population. Besides, it was centrally located on the railroad.
George Colton's taciturn nature is the reason for a controversy that seems destined never to die -- how did Searchlight get its peculiar name? He was never interviewed concerning the circumstances of his strike, except to acknowledge that he did, indeed, find gold.
The most widely circulated explanation is that it was named for Searchlight matches, a popular brand used by Colton, who smoked a pipe.

Another tale has it that it was named for a man named Lloyd Searchlight. This story seems to have arisen as a result of some confusion. There is no historical record of any man named Lloyd Searchlight, but there are records of a Lloyd-Searchlight Mining Co.
Yet another story, reported in the town newspaper, The Searchlight, has it that Colton and some other man had spent a particularly grueling and fruitless day combing the area. Returning to camp, Colton is supposed to have thrown his canteen down in disgust and declared, "There is something here, boys, but it would take a searchlight to find it." A few days later, so the story goes, he discovered the outcropping that became the Duplex, and called his new firm the Searchlight Mining Co.
And still another has it that Colton, standing atop the steep hill where the Duplex mine is located, noticed that it commanded a great view, and observed that it would be a perfect place to mount a searchlight.

However, according to family tradition, says Gale Colton, the Searchlight match theory is closest to the truth. She says that when her grandfather came through the area, he had been warned to beware of marauding Indians. Indeed, there had been Indian trouble in the area, and would be again. As he was approaching current-day Searchlight, he saw what he believed was an Indian approaching, and climbed a nearby hill to conceal himself and keep an eye on his potential attacker. As darkness fell, he made camp, but did not risk building a fire. However, he did strike a Searchlight match to light his pipe, and by its faint light, he realized he was sitting on a ledge of ore.
It is impossible to prove any of these theories. The most widely accepted one, according to Reid, is the one about Colton saying it would take a searchlight to find gold. But the family story also is credible, since there was a renegade Indian named Avote who had gone on a rampage shortly before Colton's arrival and killed several men.

Colton's discovery set off a rush to Searchlight, and, between 1907 and 1910, it was one of the more prosperous mining camps in the state. It produced almost $7 million in gold and other precious minerals, and reached a population peak of about 1,500. One of the richer Searchlighters was George Colton, who built a large home on Hobson Street, then the town's main drag. It still stands, one of the few original structures left in town, and still is owned by the Colton family. Unfortunately, says Stanton Colton, scavengers, vandals and the elements have reduced the place to a ruin.
But in his day, G.F. Colton was a leading citizen -- when he was in town.

"They got very wealthy," says Gale Colton, "and they had heavy land holdings in Pasadena, California."

Unlike many pioneers who came to Southern Nevada and were nipped by the "Desert Bug," George Colton does not seem to have embraced the desert aesthetic."I don't think he got the bug," says Stanton Colton, "because the whole family seems to have been more in California than in Nevada. They built the mine up and then leased it."Gale Colton thinks it had to do with the women that the Colton men chose, who tended toward the more sophisticated, socialite types, who preferred the social whirl of Southern California.
George Colton never sought or held public office.

"But he controlled those people who did," says Gale Colton.

As to whether George Colton was a scuffler, in the tradition of so many of his crusty contemporaries, Stanton Colton says he doesn't know of any particular incidents, but suspects that he could handle himself.
"That is," says Stanton Colton, "if he was anything like my father. My dad would go downtown every weekend night and try to find the biggest miner to pick a fight with. And he said that every Friday and Saturday night he would come home with his ass whipped. Shortly after his 16th birthday, he beat the guy. It was his way of showing he had become a man. So I'm assuming that was an inherited trait."
It is certain, though, that George Colton's brother, Will Colton, was every bit the rough and ready frontiersman.

In the winter of 1903, the county fathers in Pioche agreed to provide the town of Searchlight with local law enforcement in the persons of William L. Colton, brother of the town's founder, and Light Wheatly. Reid observes that while there were plenty of crimes and even more personal altercations, they were generally settled one-on-one and rarely were authorities called to intervene. But on one occasion, says Gale Colton, Deputy Colton was called to respond to a raging gun battle which had erupted in a saloon over a game of chance. He waded right into the fray, gun blazing.
"And that ended the fight in a hurry," says Gale Colton.

By 1917, Searchlight's mines were in decline, though they were periodically leased out and mined with some degree of success until about 1953. Most of the Coltons, including George Colton, had moved on to California. Some, like Gale Colton's father, remained. Stanton Colton served for many years as the Clark County registrar of voters, state treasurer and was a candidate for governor.
Searchlight also produced other people who went on to bigger and better things. Edith Head, the famous Hollywood costume designer, was a native, as was William Nellis, a heroic aviator in World War II, for whom Nellis Air Force Base is named. Silent film stars Clara Bow - the "It Girl" - and her husband, cowboy star Rex Bell, though not from Searchlight, had a second home at the Walking Box Ranch west of town. Bell became involved in politics and was subsequently elected lieutenant governor of Nevada.
Unlike the hundreds of other Nevada mining camps which boomed and busted, leaving behind only heaps of rock and holes in the ground, Searchlight survived. It was on the main automobile route between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the Arrowhead Highway, and managed to hang on by catering to desert-weary travelers. But in 1927, U.S. Highway 91 (now Interstate 15) was completed, bypassing the town. Searchlight hit rock bottom, with a population of only 50.

During the early 1930s, when the Hoover Dam construction was under way, the town enjoyed another boom, owing to the thirst of the nearby construction workers, and an increase in the price of gold, which made the old diggings profitable again. In the 1940s, the town developed a reputation as one of the last outposts of quasi-legal prostitution in the region, when a pimp named Willie Martello opened the El Rey Club. The bordello avoided the anti-prostitution crusade of the late 1950s by burning to the ground.
Unfortunately for historians, George Frederick Colton simply faded away. The family isn't sure exactly when he died. Gale Colton believes that he is buried in Southern California, but isn't certain exactly where.
Today, Searchlight is a popular way station for recreationists traveling to Lake Mohave and Laughlin, and incoming retirees are boosting the population back toward 1907 levels.
George Colton's town seems to have adopted the motto which appears on the Colton coat of arms: "Never Despair."

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Thousands expected at Tea Party rally in Reid's hometown of Searchlight

'Showdown' could end up helping Reid as much as hurting him

By LAURA MYERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

SEARCHLIGHT -- Sanford and Marilyn Shuler are caught in the middle.

On one side of their Coyote Mines property is Sen. Harry Reid's place.

On the other is the site of a Tea Party Express rally coming Saturday, a sort of conservative mini-Woodstock in the desert that organizers expect to draw 5,000 to 10,000 people -- maybe more -- from across the country, most of whom want to end the career of Nevada's most powerful politician.

And Marilyn Shuler, 83, and her 93-year-old husband don't like it one bit.

"I think it's an insult to have something like this right in Senator Reid's hometown," said Marilyn Shuler, who wrote a March 1 letter to Reid complaining the event will have a "negative impact" on him and the town.

"It's a slap in the face and he doesn't deserve that. They could have picked a better piece of land."

In contrast, Diane Kendall, the local real estate agent who helped pin down the private property for the "Showdown in Searchlight," embodies the townsfolk who aren't so fond of Reid and support the Tea Party movement's efforts to elect conservatives who believe less government is better government.

"I agree with what the Tea Party people are doing," Kendall said as she surveyed the desolate 160-acre site off an unmarked gravel road where dozens of lonely Joshua trees, sagebrush and various desert critters will soon be joined by thousands of sun-washed spectators and hundreds of RVs, buses, trucks and cars. "It's time for Americans to stand up. It's time for the people to wake up.''

Tiny Searchlight, like the nation, is deeply riven more than a year after President Barack Obama's election and as top Senate Democrat Reid pushes through bank and industry bailouts and health care reform that have proven unpopular among Americans still struggling in the economic recession.

That Reid, whose grandfather came to Searchlight more than a century ago, lacks unwavering support in his own hometown demonstrates the uphill climb he faces to win a fifth Senate term, weighed down by a Washington agenda.

"The town is divided," said Justice of the Peace Stan Colton, whose great-grandfather founded Searchlight, which has more than 500 registered voters and more than 1,000 citizens in the town itself and its environs. "There are a lot of people who aren't content with government right now. I think this Tea Party has its time for sure. There's a certain amount of dissatisfaction. But I think by and large everyone here thinks of Harry Reid like their family. And you don't say anything against your family."

Although sometimes you do if you're angry enough.

"I think this Tea Party is just great and these people in Washington have no concept of what things cost because they get everything for free," said John Maslanka, a porter at the Searchlight Nugget, where the owner is one of Reid's strongest local supporters and has known his family for years. "Communist China has more capitalism than we have right now. I think it's time for a change."

one for the books

Whatever happens, the "Showdown in Searchlight" is expected to be an event for the Nevada history books, a political happening on par with presidential visits that have attracted thousands, according to Guy Rocha, former state archivist. He said Nevada used to be a political backwater but has become more relevant of late, thanks to the early Nevada caucuses in 2008 that gave Obama a boost to the White House and because of the attention that Reid has drawn, both positive and negative.

"This will certainly be the biggest event that Searchlight's ever known," Rocha said.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a Tea Party darling and failed GOP vice presidential running mate of John McCain in 2008, is the big draw as keynote speaker for the high noon, 90-minute rally that's expected to get national and international attention.

Reid seems to be taking the Tea Party tempest in stride.

"Searchlight doesn't get many tourists so I'm glad they are choosing to bring all their out-of-state money to my hometown," he said last Friday in a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "The influx of money will do the town some good. I encourage everyone to drop by the Nugget to say hello to Verlie and grab a 10-cent cup of coffee."

Verlie Doing, 86, who built the Searchlight Nugget with her husband in the late 1970s, said she thinks the Tea Party Express event will be good for business and she likes the movement's populist message. But she plans to hold a Reid rally that same day in her parking lot to show support for the embattled senator.

Doing, a bit stooped but full of vigor, points to a picture on the casino wall of a sideburned Reid during his campaign for lieutenant governor, when at 29 he was the youngest to win the statewide office.

"I think that coming into his hometown to level on him is not fair," said Doing, shaking her head and then shrugging it off. "But I like the Tea Party because it's for people who want to have a voice. There are a lot of people who feel they are ignored. I hate to say it as a Democrat, but I kind of like Sarah Palin, too. I like her ideas. She seems simple and seems like a clear thinker."

Besides Palin, other advertised speakers include a bevy of conservative TV and radio talk show stars and columnists, including Jerry Doyle, Roger Hedgecock, Andrea Shea King and Andrew Breitbart; "Joe the Plumber," or Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who confronted Obama during his presidential campaign; 2008 Libertarian vice presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root; Victoria Jackson, a former "Saturday Night Live" comedian; as well as ACORN video sting journalist Hannah Giles.

Many of the two dozen candidates seeking Reid's Senate seat also plan to join the Tea Party lineup as the Republican contenders, including GOP front-runner Sue Lowden, Danny Tarkanian and Sharron Angle, furiously compete for support from the movement and its potential swing voters, who could be key in both the June 8 GOP primary and the Nov. 2 general election.

Tarkanian, a businessman and former UNLV basketball star, recently won the backing of Palin's father, Chuck Heath, who cut a radio campaign commercial for him. Former Reno Assemblywoman Angle's first radio ad featured an invitation for Tea Party patriots to join her in Searchlight. And former state Sen. Lowden has been courting conservatives in the movement, as well, by attending their events.

Lowden, for example, plans to head a campaign bus convoy Saturday morning from Laughlin to Searchlight nearly 40 miles north, leading one or two buses with dozens of supporters paying $28 a seat.

One Senate contender who plans to crash the party is Jon Scott Ashjian, a Las Vegas businessman running under the "Tea Party of Nevada" banner that he and his supporters registered with the state, though local and national leaders of the movement said they had never heard of him.

Gov. Jim Gibbons, who's also facing a difficult re-election, is another top Republican who has announced he's coming to join the Tea Party event.

Kendall, the real estate agent, said the town is buzzing with anticipation: "It will put Searchlight on the map."

You'll need a map to find it, too. If you blink you might miss the 13-square-mile town on U.S. Highway 95, though the speed limit drops to 25 mph and the rhythm is decidedly slow.

"I moved here from California and it's quite the culture change," said Janice Miller who works at an RV park while her husband has a job at one of the gas stations. "I like it because it's quiet, but sometimes it's a hassle. You can't even buy fresh meat in town for the spaghetti sauce. You have to do most of your food shopping in Henderson or Laughlin or even Las Vegas."

About 55 miles south of Las Vegas, Searchlight has no stoplight and no real grocery store. It has two small casinos --Terrible's and the Nugget -- several gas stations, a McDonald's, an elementary school named for Reid, a senior center, a community center, library and museum, a volunteer fire station, a church, a cemetery where Reid used to dig graves with his father, a bait shop, several RV parks and hundreds of homes that are mostly double-wide trailers or modular houses.

A week before the event, all the nearby RV parks are full, the only motel in town -- the 21-room El Rey -- has been booked for weeks, and the 10,000 rooms in Laughlin's 10 hotels and motels about 40 miles south were filling up, thanks to the Tea Party event and the start of spring break for universities.

"I'm not political, but this is interesting to me because it's exciting for the town," said Marie Stowers, manager of the El Rey, the motel that shares the name of the town's most famous old bordello, which burned down about half a century ago.

Las Vegas police plan to send both plainclothes and uniformed officers to the event, but aren't saying how many for security reasons. The Clark County town has only one holding cell and no policemen, and people who are arrested are usually sent to Las Vegas.

The Department of Transportation is preparing for extra traffic and the Nevada Highway Patrol said it is ready to help if there are accidents or other emergencies.

The Spartan event site is about three miles from Reid's house on a hill and 2.3 miles north of town, or two-tenths of a mile before the Coyote Mine Road leading to the Shulers' place. The Tea Party organizers and Google maps use that road as a landmark, which prompted the Shulers' complaints.

"I've had people driving up in RVs asking if this is where the Tea Party is," Marilyn Shuler said, adding that the many mining sites around the property could be a danger if people take a desert stroll. "You know, I believe that Senator Reid's dad used to work in some of those mines."

The rally area is in front of the Startel Inc. gravel pit and has been graded to level the sand over an area of about 300-by-300 feet. A truck stage will likely be set up between two prickly Joshua trees, according to organizers. About 30 portable toilets have been ordered -- which can accommodate more than 6,300 people -- and there's a place set aside for RV and vehicle parking.

"We'll do our best to handle everybody," said Kendall who, like other organizers, didn't know exactly how many people to expect, though about 10,000 have RSVP'd on the Tea Party Facebook site.

T.D. Barnes, a retired electronics engineer who lives in Henderson, owns the land and said he agreed to allow the Tea Party Express to rally there as a community service and not for political reasons. Still, the registered Republican said he doesn't plan to vote for Reid this year, though he has in the past.

"I'm not too happy with the senator right now, or any of them in Washington," Barnes said, citing the health care issue. He said he would probably back Lowden in the election. He used to know and do business with her husband, Paul, who with his wife operated several casino properties in Southern Nevada for many years.

reid expected to formally launch bid

In early April, the 70-year-old Reid is expected to formally launch his bid for re-election in a tour starting in his hometown, according to local folks in the know, though his campaign won't confirm any plans. Early polls show him in electoral trouble, running behind his top potential GOP competitors and unable to get much more than 40 percent support from potential voters.

Reid, whose wit can be as dry as the surrounding Mojave Desert, has described his birthplace as "in the middle of nowhere," a more bust than boom mining town launched by an 1897 gold strike, sustained for decades by a lively prostitution business that served military and Hoover Dam construction workers in the 1930s and 1940s, and surviving now on tourists and constant drive-through traffic.

More than $6 million worth of gold, silver, copper and lead have been pulled from the ground in Searchlight, mostly in the first decade after the turn of the century, according to Reid's 1998 book, "Searchlight. The camp that didn't fail." The population peaked at 3,000 in its heyday.

In recent years, Reid helped get federal funds to widen the highway that runs from Las Vegas and through Searchlight from two lanes to four to accommodate all the big rig traffic, and separately tens of millions of dollars to dig wells and build a water treatment plant to counter high arsenic levels.

Reid's grandfather, John, came to Searchlight in 1902, stayed until 1910, then returned more than a decade later. The senator was born in December 1939 when the town was not much more than dust and railroad tie shacks. His father, Harry, was a hard-rock miner and a drunk who sometimes hit his mother. Reid, a former boxer who got into street fights, too, calls the experience character building.

"I am here as a witness to say that character, and values, come from places you wouldn't necessarily think to look," Reid wrote in "Searchlight." "Because some of the men and women of greatest character that I will ever meet in my life came from this place of hard rocks and inhospitable soil.''

The national Tea Party organizers said they chose the old mining town to launch a three-week cross-country tour to Washington, D.C., to deliver a message to Reid that's it's time for the Senate majority leader to retire. And they wanted to get national attention for their main message: It's time for people to take back the country from the Democratic Party and politicians in power.

"We decided that if somebody like Harry Reid is going to get into our personal business and tell us what to do, we're going to get personal with him," said Tiffany Rudegner, the Sacramento-based field organizer of the "Showdown in Searchlight" who said the Tea Party movement is tired of government attempts to tell Americans what's best for them when it comes to issues such as health care.

"We want to send a message to every public servant in this country that we're the ones who put them where they are. And if they're going to get personal with us, we're going to get personal with them."

The Tea Party Express is raising money to defeat Reid and other candidates with the "Just Vote Them Out Tour" traveling through two dozen states, ending April 15 in the nation's capital on Tax Day.

Levi Russell, a spokesman for the national organization, said it has spent $300,000 so far in the Senate race in Nevada and the group is hoping to turn rally-cry words into ballot box results in 2010.

"The first six or seven or eight months we were all about the rallies," Russell said of the early days of organizing at the start of 2009. "It was amazing because conservatives were out making signs and rallying, and that's not what they normally do. They usually go home to their families. That energy has started to be directed into action."

As political events go, however, the Searchlight showdown is more symbolism than substance, said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. He believes most analysts overstate the potential effect the Tea Party movement might have on Election Day because it consists of an eclectic group of people from all parties and all walks of life who don't agree on much, except perhaps a hatred of taxes and a love of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.

"These are activists, but it's hard to say they have a single agenda or a united campaign and that undercuts their clout," he said. "Ask them who they want instead of Reid and you'll get different answers."

A lot of disenchanted American voters these days are like Debbie Burns and husband Michael, a house divided, a couple who have seen rough economic times after moving back to Searchlight, where they've come and gone over 30 years. She works at the General Merchandise Store that advertises "liquor and slots" and he's an unemployed painter, one man among Nevada's 13 percent jobless. She voted for Obama and he voted for McCain. She has supported Reid before, he admires Palin.

Now an independent, Burns doesn't know whether she'll back Reid again in November.

"I voted for Obama and I thought we'd see some changes, but I've been dis­appointed," Burns said. "I was unemployed for some time and this little store saved my life. So I don't know who I'll support."

Reid has welcomed the entry of the Tea Party and multiple candidates from multiple parties in his race, but one reason might be that a divided electorate could splinter the vote, ceding the race to the incumbent who has said he's ready to spend a record $25 million to keep his Senate seat.

A recent poll by the Las Vegas Review-Journal bears this out, showing that a Tea Party candidate could get 18 percent of the vote and the GOP nominee 32 percent, leaving Reid a winning 36 percent.

So the "Showdown in Searchlight" could end up helping Reid as much as hurting him.

"The people of Nevada know me. I'm not going to change who I am," Reid said March 8 when he filed for re-election, noting he doesn't follow modern-day blogs and cable TV shows that provide second-by-second coverage of his ups and downs. "I'm the same person today that I used to be."

Contact Laura Myers at lmyers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.

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10 Die in Crash of Isle-Based Plane

Auguest 3rd, 1970

Article submitted by Ed Cox Nep147967@aol.com [28JUN98]

SEARCHLIGHT, Nev. (AP) - Ten Hawaii-based Navy men died when, witnesses said, a bolt of lightning apparently shattered their antisubmarine patrol plane and sent it raining in fiery pieces onto a rocky ridge near here.

The P-3B patrol plane stationed at NAS Barbers Point, Hawaii, was on a training flight yesterday with its crew of three officers and seven enlisted men.

The Navy today released the names of the four victims whose families live here. They are:

Lt Norman L. Johnson, 29, of Quinnessec, Mich., whose wife, Susan, lives at 5678 Dovekie Ave., Ewa Beach.

Lt. (j.g.) Henry J. McGreevey, 25, of Newark, O. His wife, Rose, lives inthe Royal Poinciana Apartments in Waipahu.

Jet Mechanic 1.C Johnny Shelton, 37, of Sugualak, Miss. His wife, Frances, lives at 6252A Ibis Ave., Ewa Beach.

The plane was about 50 miles south of Las Vegas on a flight from Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas to the North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego when it entered an area of thunderstorm activity.

"I saw a flash of lightning in a black cloud and then saw this burning debris fall out of the clouds," said Harvry Swan, a resident of the southern Nevada desert hamlet.

A power company lineman, Beryl Jarvis, said his eye was drawn to the plane by a flash of light.

"It looked like it was hit by lightning" said Jarvis. "It went down in pieces. When it hit the ground, there was a big ball of fire and a big puff of smoke. That was all."

Sheriff's deputies said the remains of the four-engine turbo-prop plane was spread over about a half mile of rugged ridge line. Despite on-and-off rain, parts of the plane were still burning three hours later.

Air Force authorities at Nellis said there would be an investigation to establish the cause of the crash, but first indications supported the reports that it was struck by lightning.

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