Back in 1973, a buddy and I went to Las Vegas with what could fairly be described as a “plethora” of illegal drugs aboard for personal use.
Think “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by the late great Hunter Thompson. In our remake there were two Hunter Thompson’s on a mission to gamble and to visit all the strip joints on the Vegas strip.
We had a worse time than the master himself did on our way to Las Vegas. As we hurtled towards what we hoped was Sin City in a little sports car with the top down, we somehow (surprise) made a wrong turn.
When we pulled into the tiny town of Nipton, we suspected something was wrong. It was all but dead.
Just a few people lived out there in the middle of nowhere. Turned out that we were 60 miles south of Las Vegas and 10 miles off the major highway that connects Nipton to Los Angeles.
When I recently read that Nipton, an old gold town, was getting an infusion of legal cannabis that was going to turn that town into a new boom town, I was excited. One of the nation’s largest cannabis companies bought the entire California desert town of 80 acres.
They have big plans. American Green, the new owner, is on a mission to build a pot paradise. A solar farm that provides much of the tiny town’s electricity is going to get a boost.
The plan is to expand that farm and also bottle and sell cannabis-infused water from Nipton’s plentiful aquifer, joint moves that would make the town green in more ways than one.
American Green is also reaching out to edibles manufacturers and other pot-industry businesses, hoping they’ll be interested in relocating to Nipton and bringing jobs with them.
Not in my wildest drug-induced dreams did I ever suspect that little town we were lost in would become a pot town with a promising future.
Oh, just for the record, we finally made it to Las Vegas where we lost most of our money that night.
As It Stands, I wonder if the new owners are going to change the town’s name to something like “Potsville or Green City?”
The Creative Chronicles of Dave Stancliff 