Small town rich in history

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WENDOVER - The first atomic bomb. The world land-speed record. Wendover Will.

Folks along the Wasatch Front burn across the Salt Flats to gamble in a handful of casinos just across the Nevada state line and then scoot back home with little notion of the colorful past of Wendover, explains unofficial town historian Gertrude Tripp.

One hundred years ago, the Western Pacific Railroad Co. put up a water tower near the Utah/Nevada line to feed its steam engines, and the desert outpost called Wendover was born.

"There is a wonderful history of Wendover that nobody knows and nobody understands," says Tripp, thumbing through a loose-leaf notebook of old photographs in her cozy living room. "They think it's just a gambling town, but it's a wonderful place to live."

It has been a railroad way station, an Army outpost, a race-car pit stop and a gambling getaway. Through it all one constant remains: The residents of this small Utah community care for one another, notes Tripp's son, Vaughn Tripp, who is Wendover's police chief.

"The town was very tight. If something happened, people would pull together," he says. "Even with all the newcomers, it's the same."

Local lore has it that Wendover icon Bill Smith arrived unceremoniously in 1924. The unemployed mechanic was tossed off a Western Pacific boxcar en route to Salt Lake City from San Francisco.

Nobody knows why he stayed. Maybe it was the smell of sage after a spring rain or the song of the meadowlarks after the train rolled by. Maybe he was just broke.

But after a stint working in the potash plant east of town, Smith came into possession of a little gas station called the Cobblestone, recalls Mark Tripp, Gertrude's husband.

"He won the Cobblestone in a game of dice," the 86-year-old west desert native says with a smile.

In 1931, gambling was legalized in Nevada and the Cobblestone became the State Line Casino with a half-dozen slot machines parked inside the gas station, Mark Tripp explains.

Smith and a partner added some cabins and a coffee shop and later a giant neon cowboy, called Wendover Will. But the stopover remained tiny until World War II.

Practically overnight, the dusty border town's population mushroomed from several hundred to more than 20,000 as barracks after barracks went up and servicemen and women poured in from around the nation. The old Army Air Corps - now the Air Force - established a major airport and training center there.

Bonnie Tilbury remembers that time. She turned 14 in 1941 and landed a job with Western Union delivering telegrams.

She got a bicycle and $20 a week.

"It was a good job until I had to deliver my girlfriend's mother a death telegram," she remembers. "It was terrible."

Toward war's end, Col. Paul Tibbets and the crew of the Enola Gay trained in Wendover to drop the first atomic bombs - dubbed Little Boy and Fat Man - on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Along with Smith, Tibbets is an icon in Wendover. And Tilbury is proud to have known the World War II ace.

"I met him when I went to work at the signal office at the base," she recalls. "And my mom would baby-sit for them once in a while."

By the mid-1950s, the base was a ghost town and Wendover's population shriveled to about 600. It was so small, it didn't have a high school. That didn't come until the mid-1960s.

But the townsfolk never were bored, says Gertrude Tripp.

"We had the Lions and Lady Lions and the American Legion and our church. We'd have dinners and dances. The ladies would have birthday parties for each other. There was always something to do."

Small-town doings gave way to big-time excitement in 1963, when Craig Breedlove guided his jet-powered Spirit of America past the 400-mph mark on the nearby Salt Flats. In 1964, Art Arfons and his Green Monster racer surpassed Breedlove.

The pair took turns stealing the land-speed record from each other and "WENDOVER" was the dateline for the news that traveled around the globe.

Gertrude Tripp remembers rubbing shoulders with them.

"I worked in the motel when Art Arfons and Craig Breedlove were breaking the records," she recalls. "We knew them quite well."

When race season ended, Wendover retreated to its sleepy nature, recalls the police chief. That changed when the interstate offramps were completed in 1976. Visitors exited in droves.

"From Tremonton to Santaquin," Vaughn Tripp notes, "the Wasatch Front has a lot of devoted gamblers."

What had been a Utah town with a casino just across the line sprawled into Nevada along with a passel of new gambling parlors.

Immigrants heard the call of plentiful jobs at the casinos, hotels and restaurants in the early 1980s. The new work force began settling in on both sides of the state line and, before long, Nevada officials christened the new city West Wendover.

The place embodies two towns and two governments. The new section is bigger and more prosperous. Despite efforts to combine them, it won't happen anytime soon.

"The people, themselves, like to think it's one community," Gertrude Tripp says. "But one is in Utah and one is in Nevada. Now we have two high schools and two elementary schools and two of everything. And it's just too technical to change it."

Things have changed in Wendover. Latinos now make up the majority. The Nugget replaced the State Line. Wendover Will moved to the outskirts. The barracks sit rotting by the airport. And there is even a bit of crime.

But the train still clickety-clacks as it rolls by the Tripp house. And when it's gone, if you listen, you might hear the trill of a meadowlark or wild horn-honking of someone who has hit a rich jackpot.

csmart@sltrib.com

Wendover is 100