For sale: town with a view

By Ed Vogel

July 11, 2000 Web posted at: 11:30 AM EDT (1530 GMT)

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CURRIE, Nevada (Las Vegas Review Journal) -- When he talks about painting his house and fixing up the old school, Glenn Taylor does not sound like someone ready to sell half of a town in the middle of nowhere.

The sun sets over Currie, Nevada

But Currie is on the market, at least the share owned by Taylor and his wife, Brenda.

For $325,000, you get their two-bedroom home, the 92-year-old Goshute Mercantile, which houses a bar, restaurant and convenience store and has a gasoline pump out front. You also acquire five tourist cabins, a 16-space RV park, an old red schoolhouse, a horse corral and various old buildings, all on 20 acres of land.

The selling price even includes an old trailer that substitutes as a church every Thursday evening when a rural minister from Wells makes his rounds.

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Of course, there are drawbacks to becoming the czar of Currie -- those being a 75-mile drive south to Ely to go to the supermarket, or 120 miles northwest to Elko for any semblance of city life.

"This is everything I ever wanted," Taylor says as he looks at the old bottles and rocks he has stashed in the schoolhouse. "Even the winters are wonderful. When it's cold, just throw another log on the fire and enjoy it. It doesn't get any prettier than this."

Any buyer must enjoy wide-open spaces and big blue skies. They also must put up with children who wander down to Nelson Creek with their fishing poles on summer afternoons. And you never can tell when an occasional wild horse, deer or elk will wander into the community of 15 people.

The population includes the teacher that Elko County sends out each fall to live in a trailer next to the new school. She taught four students last year.

Besides the Taylors and three of their five children, Currie is home to a Nevada Transportation Department highway maintenance worker and his daughter, along with the folks on a nearby ranch. There are five other ranches within a 10-mile radius.

Taylor said he has had quite a few lookers since he placed his share of the town on the market with Wendover Realty four months ago.

"I spent all day yesterday with a guy who wanted to take pictures of everything," he said.

But there have been no takers.

The couple is not concerned. They don't intend to leave until their 12-year-old son, James, completes the eighth grade in two years. Elko County provides no high school classes in Currie, only a one-room school for first through eighth grades. The closest high school bus stop is 35 miles away. So if they want to stay in Currie, the Taylors must board their children in Wells or Ely.

They sent two older children away for high school. The last dropped out at 16 and they'd rather that not be James' fate. Consequently, the Taylors want to sell their Currie holdings and move to a place where James at least can catch a school bus.

"It is not something I really want to do," Brenda Taylor said of selling the property. "I'd love to stay here the rest of my life, but his education is pretty important to us."

James doesn't want to leave. He doesn't feel out of touch with the world in Currie. The family receives every TV station on their satellite dish and their collection of videotapes has passed 200.

"I want to stay. It's enough for me just to be here and look at the mountains. Watching all the critters is like watching a movie," the boy said.

Along with a school bus, Glenn Taylor has one other requirement for his future home: "We've got to have a creek."

But for now, he intends to develop Currie. He would like to plant 50 trees at the RV park. And he wants to repair the 100-year-old schoolhouse so a brother who may move up from Pahrump would have a place to live.

The Taylors have lived their entire lives in the rural outback country of the West. Brenda was raised on a farm in Utah; Glenn grew up on an Ely area ranch, where the closest neighbors were 14 miles away.

His parents delivered mail to make ends meet -- and one of their stops was Currie. Some summers he rode along with them and stopped at the Goshute Mercantile.

"We'd hit here about 8 a.m. with the mail and I'd spend the day at the creek fishing," he said.

So when his dad told him most of the town was for sale nine years ago, Taylor was an eager buyer.

Currie was founded by Joseph Currie, who ranched in 1885 next to Nelson Creek. The Northern Nevada Railway passed by the ranch at the beginning of the 20th century. Then came U.S. Highway 93, the two-lane blacktop that runs from Canada to Mexico.

Around 1908, E.G. Reynolds built the Goshute Mercantile, which everybody simply calls the Currie Store. Taylor believes it is the oldest continuing operating business on Highway 93.

Despite its isolation, Currie is not a haven for recluses. Taylor figures he is lucky to have 10 free minutes a day as Highway 93 has become a speedway for truckers. The North American Free Trade Agreement has turned the road into an international highway. Trucks hauling auto parts out of Canada race south to Mexico and then return carrying loads of produce. With the Pacific Coast freeways clogged with vehicles, Highway 93 is a quicker road to Mexico, according to Taylor.

He keeps the Goshute Mercantile open seven days a week between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. The coolers carry the staples of rural living -- Coke, Pepsi, Coors, Bud. He avoids hiring extra help. Too many hired hands in the past have devoted most of their free time to drinking.

On some mornings, Taylor acts as bartender and local psychologist.

"You have to like people at their worst," Taylor said. "They get better depending on your behavior."

Even after they close the store, the Taylors occasionally get up in the middle of the night and turn the pump on for motorists running on empty. And if passers-by are broke and hungry, they may give them a few dollars and some food.

"If we don't help them, they don't get there," Brenda Taylor said. "Sometimes you can have bad, scary people stopping here."

During the day, she keeps the Currieburgers frying on the grill. Some days she feeds 60 tourists. Then there are days when no one wants a meal.

"It takes a man and a woman to operate a place like this," she said. "You are your own boss here, and you have an old-fashioned way of life. People say `How can you live out there?' Well, I say try it for a week and see."

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