Photo: Don Vetter
RENO HISTORY
Wildcreek and the Winds of Change Wildcreek Golf Course as we know it ended a 40-year run this fall on a brilliant windless day that turned the little valley of controversy into a golden child of fond memories. While not as iconic as the Mapes Hotel, Wildcreek will always serve as a historical totem that reflects our town’s inspirations and aspirations... warts and all. It’s a shame that our school district couldn’t see that unique history and preserve the Wildcreek saga by naming its $200 million high school after the course. (They chose to stay with Hug High School). Wildcreek’s topography is a mix of willowed wetlands that ascend into the rock scrabble of the former Wedekind Mining District, today the largest piece of open park lands left in the City of Sparks. The course’s lowlands were a part of John Capurro’s dairy farm. His family was among the many Italian,
don’t forget the Irish, immigrants who helped form the community’s breadbasket. There was no trendy local food movement back in the late 1800s; “local food” was just how you got fresh milk, fruit and vegetables. On Wildcreek’s western border, the Orr Ditch (1875) still winds its way to the once bucolic Spanish Springs Valley, a reminder of the engineering it took to cultivate the towns’ 20,000+ acres of farmlands in the Great Basin Desert. From Farmland to “Golf-cation” Amenity Wildcreek was opened at the end of the go-go ’70s, another amenity to help fill the 1,000-plus new hotel rooms thrust into the market from the Circus-Circus, MGM Grand (i.e. Reno Hilton and Grand Sierra Resort) and other casino resorts that were erected in that decade. The course was part of the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority’s (RSCVA) Reno
HERITAGE
11
