Quirky Cal-Nev-Ari for sale from the ground up for $17 million

This is one of those places you come across in rural Nevada every now and then.

It's quirky. It's isolated. It's tiny.

Cal-Nev-Ari is so small, it takes less time to drive up and down every dirt road in town than it does to navigate the Spaghetti Bowl in Las Vegas. The trip would be even quicker if the speed limit weren't 10 mph, but then you'd kick up so much dust the county would probably issue an air quality advisory on your car.

Speaking of quirky, you wanna buy it?

The town is for sale.

The 354 people who Clark County says live here aren't included in the $17 million sale price, of course, and neither are the lots their mobile homes sit on, but everything else is. The casino. The three deep-water wells. The sewer system. The utility company. The airport. RV park. Market. Mobile home park. A little more than 500 acres of dirt.

Nancy Kidwell, who raised this place from the dry earth 45 years ago with her husband, Slim, can't take care of it anymore.

"I have to think of the town," she said. "I have to think of its future. What if I died tomorrow? Who else could do what I do?"

And so, rather than risk its death, Kidwell is setting the town free.

She tried selling it a few years ago and had a buyer lined up. A couple of developers were competing for it, in fact.

There wasn't much land left up in the city -- that's Las Vegas, 70-some miles north -- so they went looking elsewhere.

Then the economy crashed. The deal fell through.

In the meantime, Kidwell can hardly keep up.

She runs the whole place, mostly herself. Slim died in 1983, and her current husband, Ace, is so ill he hardly gets out of bed.

Kidwell needs to hire a caretaker to look after Ace when she's working, even though she's right down the street.

She can't go see her mom, who is 91 and lives in Utah. She hasn't taken a vacation "since I don't know when," and, though she won't say how old she is, a little math will tell you she's on the high side of 70.

She and Slim started this place in 1965, when she was 28. They'd met in Southern California. Slim was a flight instructor. Nancy took lessons.

One day, Slim was flying back from wherever it is he went. He looked down and saw a vision: a triangle-shaped pattern in the desert.

He figured it was some old military training facility, and it turned out he was right. It sat on Bureau of Land Management property along U.S. Highway 95 not too far from where California, Nevada and Arizona meet.

Slim pitched his idea to Nancy: Let's get that land and build our own little community there.

And so that's what they did. Cal-Nev-Ari, they called it, population: 4. There was Slim, Nancy, their dog and their cat.

They set about drilling wells. Lining up power. Installing sewer lines. They built hangars for small airplanes. They sold plots of land. Nancy remembers the first, an acre, going for $3,000 to a guy from up the road in Searchlight.

Gradually, the little place grew. People moved in. The Kidwells built the casino. A market, the RV park. More people came.

Most are retirees. Folks such as Patrick Carmichael, 61, who's tending bar in the casino.

He said the town is "quiet." It's "peaceful." It's "not as hot as Bullhead City," which is where he used to live.

He retired and came here 15 years ago, he said. Can't stand the city. There's no traffic, smog or crime out here. And besides, if you have a four-wheel-drive, you can go pretty much wherever you want. The lake. The mountains. What else do you need?

Ila Kyle, 63, said the same thing. She was a cocktail waitress in Laughlin for 25 years, then retired to move here with her husband 12 years ago.

She does pretty much the same stuff she'd do as a retiree in any old place: plays bingo, makes bead jewelry, hangs out with other retired ladies.

She's a little worried about what might happen to the town after Kidwell sells it. What if some big developer comes in and starts building tract homes?

But she's only a little worried. She doesn't figure too many people would want to live way out here.

"I don't think things are going to change much," she said.

Kidwell, too, said she doesn't think there will be much change. She wants whoever buys the town to keep the airplane hangars around. She doesn't want the lots subdivided.

She doesn't think anybody would do that, anyway. What would be the point? If you want a tiny lot with no peace and quiet, you can live in the city.

Kidwell said the place is changing anyway. Many of the original inhabitants are gone, victims of old age.

"I worry that I might outlast them all," she said. "I'm not getting any younger, and I don't have any children."

So, she'll sell, but she doesn't plan on leaving.

After Slim -- who was 34 years older than Nancy -- died, she became close with his son, Ace, also a pilot. The two married a decade later.

But with Ace's health getting worse, nearly all the work has fallen to Nancy.

She doesn't want to get into the details about Ace's health, but she makes it clear that she feels run ragged.

She has a part-time bookkeeper who gives her some relief, but mostly she does all the work herself. She hates leaving Ace with the caretaker, no matter how good the care may be.

"I feel uncomfortable leaving him with someone who's a caretaker," she said. "They take care of him, but they don't love him like I do."

She said Slim is buried in a small cemetery in town. There are two more spots right next to his, she said, for her and Ace.

"I intend to be here forever."

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.