Tom Gorman looks at the new Southwest, where desert solitude and beauty give way to development

Sunday, March 19, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

If, like me, you've had enough of those sappy television commercials for Mountain's Edge, that mammoth residential development off Blue Diamond Road in the southwest part of the valley, just imagine how Ed and Cathy Rand feel.

They've been living at the mountain's edge for nine years, sharing the neighborhood with coyotes and desert tortoises, rabbits and quail.

And for the record, the widely promoted backdrop for this newest of suburbs isn't really a mountain, but more of a crumbling butte protruding from the foothills of the Spring Mountains.

The Rands moved here from Oklahoma after a windstorm destroyed their commercial greenhouse operation. They bought their 2 1/2-acre parcel at butte's edge to get some distance from people.

Until he went on medical disability, Ed, 61, was a pit boss at Bally's; Cathy, who is 59, is in the time-share sales business.

A gravel road leads to their place. Until 1995, when electricity finally reached the property, water had to be trucked to the house. Some people used generators to operate pumps.

The Rands and their neighbors - a half-dozen or so houses are near butte's edge - suck their water out of the desert aquifer and rely on septic tanks and leach lines to handle sewage.

This is the old Southwest by almost every definition. The TV commercial for Mountain's Edge shows cowboys on horseback. Until a couple of years ago, Cathy was riding her own horses at butte's edge.

But then she stopped her desert romps with Amy and Gabriella, a pair of Paso Fino horses known for their graceful, smooth gait. The dust from the construction of Mountain's Edge started affecting the horses' health, she said, so she reluctantly decided to stable them elsewhere. Now isn't that ironic? The new Southwest wasn't so much replacing the old Southwest as it was killing it.

The Rands knew that one day civilization would creep toward them. But it arrived more suddenly than they expected - tracts of homes cheek-to-jowl in various stages of completion.

Workers crawl over the 2,400-acre master-planned development, pouring slabs, erecting wood frames, wrapping them in foam and chicken wire, and slathering stucco in every imaginable earth tone.

Some homes are only seven feet apart; the idea of RV parking is a child having just enough clearance to pull his wagon into the back yard.

The sales material boasts that Mountain's Edge is "The New Southwest." New, as in land-starved developers purchasing desert at top dollar from the federal Bureau of Land Management so DR Horton and Ryland and Pardee and Beazer and Richmond American could build desperately needed houses in America's fastest-growing region.

And that's how the old Southwest got erased.

The Rands watch all this from their home, up by butte's edge.

The sprawling new neighborhoods fan out in front of their home. Spanish-tile and concrete rooftops obliterate the Rands' view of the Strip. They use to be able to see it all; today they can barely see the top of the Stratosphere, Wynn Las Vegas and Mandalay Bay.

The Rands wonder how much advance planning went into Mountain's Edge, either by the developer or the county.

Lots of people already have moved in, the stucco barely dry. Traffic clogs two-lane Blue Diamond Road; what used to be a 25-minute drive to the center of the Strip now takes 45 minutes.

The Rands avoid the intersection of Durango Drive and Blue Diamond because they don't want to die in a traffic collision. That's life in the new Southwest.

The nearest fire station is seven miles away. Apparently government doesn't think there's a need to open one yet at Mountain's Edge, even though moving vans are pulling up in front of houses and unloading wide-eyed families with boys who want to ride their bicycles two miles up to butte's edge.

Mail is no longer delivered to the mailboxes that served the Rands and their neighbors because streets are torn up by construction. So now they drive five miles away to get their mail, which seems unfair because they were there first.

Some of the new street names conjure up wonderful visions: Sky Gate, Bolting Cloud, Hawk Ravine, Grand Sky.

Other street names are less inspired, unless you yearn for urban Southern California. There is Buena Park Street, Cerritos Court, Pico Rivera Avenue, Hollywood Hills Avenue and Alhambra Valley Street. I wouldn't want to live on Pico Rivera Avenue, no matter how lovely the house.

Ed and Cathy Rand complain about how clumsily the growth has reached their ranchette, but they knew the day would come.

And they're the first to acknowledge how the value of their own property is ratcheting dramatically upward as residential Las Vegas creeps in their direction.

They paid nearly $200,000 in 1997 for their 1,640-square-foot home on 2 1/2 acres. Cathy, a former real estate appraiser, estimates the property is now worth about $1.8 million, given how land prices in the suburban desert now go for about $500,000 an acre.

That's the new Southwest, up at butte's edge.