Columnist Susan Sndyer: Holiday is key for Lovelock

Susan Sndyer

Monday, Feb. 14, 2005 | 8:35 a.m.

Cupid's hearts of red may help Lovelock see some much-needed green.

For one thing, journalists seeking a Valentine's Day play on words are falling in love with this tiny Northern Nevada town of 2,000 that sits 100 miles east of Reno along Interstate 80.

"It's actually been picking up in the past couple of years," Kirsten Hertz, of the Lovelock-Pershing County Chamber of Commerce, said Friday. "I have an appointment this afternoon to do an interview with a radio station in Nebraska. And last year, the NBC (television) affiliate from Reno came out to do the weathercast from here on Valentine's Day."

But Hertz said there soon will be even more to adore about Lovelock, which has received a $40,000 state tourism grant to build a set of "Lovers' Locks" outside the town's Pershing County Courthouse.

Currently, Lovelock's biggest claim to fame has been the historic round courthouse, which is one of the few (some sources say two) such cylindrical-shaped courthouses still in use.

But come fall, Hertz hopes there will be a new gazebo out front with stone pillars and giant chains inside, on which lovers can affix padlocks engraved with their names as testaments of their devotion.

"It's after a Chinese tourist attraction," Hertz said. "They showed it on 'The Amazing Race' Tuesday night. There are these big cement pillars with the chains that have these huge links. And people put padlocks on the chains to represent their relationships."

The Chinese chain shown on the reality series has thousands of locks, some of which have hung there so long they are rusted virtually beyond recognition.

With interest from Chinese tourists increasing across all of Nevada, Hertz said those issuing grants on behalf of the state tourism and economic development commissions figured the Lovelock connection was a perfect match.

Hertz sees not only the gazebo and chains, but a market for custom-made locks, T-shirts, weddings, Valentine's Day balloon races and maybe even a full-blown festival devoted to love in Lovelock.

Tourism and specialized cottage industries are the hope for the future in many of Nevada's rural towns. Lovelock's main employer is the state government, with a medium security prison just outside of town. Agriculture and silver mining still exist, but tenuously.

"The drought has really pummeled the agriculture, and the economy is down with agriculture and mining," Hertz said.

Fernley and Fallon, 59 and 55 miles respectively from Lovelock, are fast becoming bedroom communities for those commuting to jobs in Reno. Hertz suspects it won't be long before some of that growth spills into Lovelock.

"We're kind of the next step," she said. "There are a lot of opportunities. But there are a lot of challenges just having enough people to pull this off."

Still, where there's Lovelock, there's hope. Hertz met with the Lovers' Locks project engineer early last week.

"We're hoping to have something on the ground by next fall. We're hopeful it it could turn into a lot of different things," she said. "It's just so crazy, it might work."