Transplants transforming ‘Little Town’

Sunday, July 18, 1999 | 9:41 a.m.

When Burt Goodman moved to Mesquite seven years ago he had fewer than 2,000 neighbors.

Now he has around 15,000.

"You don't notice much. There's more traffic, and there's more casinos," the owner of Burt's Deli & Bakery said. "But it's a nice little town."

Seems a lot of folks agree with him -- about 1,600 people have been moving in each year since 1990.

Mesquite, which wasn't even an incorporated town until 15 years ago, has emerged as the fastest-growing small town in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Census figures released in June show the population grew from 1,871 in 1990 to 10,125 last year. That's 441 percent. The nation's second-fastest growing small town was Frisco, Texas, which grew 328 percent.

Mesquite's growth rate eclipses even Henderson's 135 percent population increase, which garnered the Census Bureau's fastest-growing title for towns of 100,000 or more. Las Vegas ranked fifth in that category with a population increase of 56 percent.

Mesquite city officials, however, say the census figures are low. Right now Mesquite's population hovers around 15,000, and they predict it could reach 30,000 in five years.

"I came here looking for a better quality of life," said Mesquite Mayor Chuck Horne, who took office July 1 and moved to Mesquite from Las Vegas four years ago.

Most of the newcomers are moving in from other states, with many buying retirement digs or vacation homes they will use during Mesquite's mild springs, falls and winters.

Others are transplants from the immediate Las Vegas Valley area who are trading the fast-paced city lifestyle for a small town and a 90-mile work commute. Former Mesquite police chief P. Michael Murphy, who resigned earlier this summer to take a job in Las Vegas, says he will make such a commute in order to continue living in Mesquite.

"People want a slower life. That is a big factor in why people want to come here," Horne said.

With the expansion of the town's resort-type casinos and golf courses and its proximity to outdoor wonders like the Grand Canyon and Southern Utah's national parks, Mesquite has become a place where people can have fun without the hustle and bustle of a city.

But the idyllic is still less than ideal.

The town has five major casinos and five golf courses but has no 24-hour emergency medical clinic, no major retail outlets besides a Smith's grocery store and no middle school.

There is a medical clinic in town, but residents who need to see a doctor "right now" typically drive 35 miles to St. George, Utah. Same goes for shopping for items beyond groceries. The Utah resort town is closer than Las Vegas and less harrowing to navigate.

Horne said those in need of immediate medical attention will have a shorter drive in the very near future. A new clinic scheduled to open in August is supposed to offer 24-hour emergency care by January. Horne hopes the town will be able to build a full-scale hospital in the next couple of years.

Dependent on tourism

But Mesquite's economic base still is too dependent on tourism and casinos to support year-round living for many people, he said.

Employees of the bigger resorts said reduced hours and layoffs are common in summer, when the heat scares off would-be tourists. It's hard to make a mortgage payment under those terms.

"People come in turning in their uniforms, and they're in tears," said Liana Cooper, a 43-year-old cocktail waitress at the Casablanca resort.

Cooper moved to the Mesquite area Seattle 16 years ago. She lives in Bunkerville, a teeny community that faces Mesquite on the opposite side of the Virgin River.

Her daughter will be a fourth grader this fall in Bunkerville's new elementary school. Until the school opened in 1998, teachers presided over extra-large classes and even a few double sessions at Mesquite's only elementary school.

Mesquite middle school students still are waiting for a place of their own. The sixth through eighth graders attend classes at the high school.

Clark County school officials are working on a deal to buy some land for a middle school, but no definite building date has been set, Mesquite City Manager Bryan Montgomery said. Cooper's home along Bunkerville's gravelly main street sits on a ridge overlooking the valley that encompasses Mesquite. The view still embraces a fair amount of green farmland along the river and open spaces in the hills beyond.

For now, anyway.

A couple of doors down from Cooper's place, at the end of a stubby residential street, a sign announces plans for a subdivision of three-bedroom, two-bath homes called Country Meadows -- just in case anyone forgets what once was there. No homes have been started, but one paved cul-de-sac already exists.

"It's amazing how this place has grown," Cooper said.

She adjusted the angle of a hose watering the tree in her front yard and pointed to the modest homes of her neighbors.

"When I bought this, none of these were here. I had beautiful scenery," she said.

And she says the population explosion has stolen more than her view.

"I'm not feeling as safe as I used to. I actually lock my doors now, and I didn't used to," Cooper said. "And I hear noises that wake me up."

At least when things go bump in the night these days, there are more police officers to take care of them, said Murphy, who resigned in June after nine years as police chief.

When he took the chief's job in 1990, the department had seven employees -- four of them officers -- and the dispatcher still jotted calls on a pad of paper.

More officers

Now the town has 19 sworn officers, five corrections officers, a new criminal justice complex with a jail and enough civilian administrative employees to bring the total roster to 41 full- and part-time workers. Officers have lap-top computers in their cars, and the dispatch operation also is computerized.

"This (building) was planned for a 20-year growth cycle, and it's holding to the growth pattern. But in 20 years we'll definitely be crowded," he said.

Murphy is leaving his post for a new job overseeing the city of Las Vegas' field training services, which includes city marshals, the parking violations section and animal control. But he'll still live in Mesquite, whose city manager, Bryan Montgomery, isn't surprised.

People who still think of Mesquite as a weary traveler's dusty pit-stop for slots and coffee may well wonder why anyone would live there all the time. But Montgomery, an Idaho resident who moved to Mesquite eight months ago after taking one look at Las Vegas, said its seeming quiescence is its allure.

"Mesquite continues to be the alternative to Las Vegas and the more hectic areas of the valley," Montgomery said. "We have the lowest crime and the lowest property taxes of any incorporated city in the state, and it's continuing to be a logical place to move to.

"It's a nice place to come and live and raise a family."

Mormons thought so. They're the ones who settled Mesquite back in the 19th century, said Nora Hughes, one of the curators of the Desert Valley Museum in downtown Mesquite.

Hughes greets visitors and tells them to sign the guest book in almost the same breath. She likes to keep track of who comes and goes. Most of the signatures belong to tourists. The pages, like the town, don't fill up as quickly in summer.

"There are a lot of people who live in town who have never been in. They say, 'I didn't even know we had a museum,' " Hughes said.

The squatty, hand-built rock building has thick walls that keep it cool even in the peak of summer. Its two rooms are jam-packed with photographs, antiques and books telling the stories of the farmers who settled the area in 1879 and made way for the businesses that followed.

Those farms are memories now. And most of the businesses that followed into the middle of this century are long gone, too, Hughes said.

The Freezer Cafe is now a store that sells parts for recreational vehicles. Vonda's Cafe is now called The Chalet. And the City Hall parking lot covers what used to be Faye's Cafe.

"The old town of Mesquite is gone," Hughes said. "It's sad to see the old houses going down. There's only four or five of them left."

When Hughes moved to Mesquite to marry 35 years ago, the areas covered by today's apartment buildings and subdivisions were alfalfa fields and gardens.

"It's just like mushrooms," Hughes said of how quickly the neighborhoods have emerged.

"These developers found out what kind of weather we had," she said."They'd offer $300,000 for a farmer's land, and the farmer thinks, 'How many bales of hay would it take to get $300,000?' And the young people just don't want to do it (farm)."

Back-to-back floods during the early 1970s destroyed the farm Hughes and her husband owned. They learned the price of development when it came time to sell.

"We sold it for what we wanted. And then some guy turned around and sold it for four times what we sold it for," Hughes recalled. "They changed the river channel. There are houses down there now."

The old ways have pretty much disappeared, but that's OK, Hughes said.

"The change is good," she said. "If you don't change and grow, you don't progress."

Take casinos, for instance. The more the merrier, Hughes said. They keep families together because local young people can find work in the casinos, and they don't have to move away, she said. They can work and have an apartment in the town they grew up in.

"When I came here, there was not an apartment to rent," Hughes said. "Sometimes there was a house, but if somebody rented it, they were there forever."

Still, Cooper says there need to be more new homes for those with service-level jobs. It takes a couple of people working full-time jobs to pay for a typical house in the $130,000 range.

J.D. Brewster says there definitely is a demand for homes in lower price ranges, and that's driving developers to build some alternatives. Brewster sells "twin homes," which are bright, airy 1990s duplexes.

Units share one wall -- the one that separates the garages. But each owner owns the land on which his unit sits. It's a single-family lifestyle without the higher price tag. A two-bedroom, two-bath home sells for $98,950, and one with three bedrooms is priced at $110,950.

Just showing up

Brewster hardly has to do more than show up each day.

"I sold two this morning," he said around lunchtime on a recent Tuesday. "They say Mesquite is slow this time of year, but I don't see it. I'm busier now than when I first started."

Most of those who stop to look are from other states. A fair number come from Utah's population-packed Salt Lake City-Provo corridor or from crowded areas of Colorado and are looking for secondary winter homes, he said.

Others are local, such as the family from the Moapa Indian reservation who bought a house from Brewster the first week of July.

"The opportunity is great out here," Brewster said.

For now Mesquite is still the kind of town people pictured when they moved there to get away from it all.

It's a town where the speed limit is 25 mph unless posted otherwise -- and it isn't.

It's a town where a businessman like deli-owner Goodman says he'll give you a free bowl of his wife's homemade chicken noodle soup "after you've spent all your money on doctors."

It's a town that won't be able to escape the population growth that's creeping into every out-of-the-way nook and cranny of the West much longer.

"People are really surprised how fast it's growing," said Brewster, who finally took the plunge and moved from Las Vegas to Mesquite earlier this month.

"I suspect in five years you won't even know the place."

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