NEVADA’S DISNEYLAND
“Sundown Was a Funtown” The other day, my daughter and I were discussing possible hikes we could take in and around Reno. In true teenage fashion she had been perusing social media to see where her friends had been recently. After scrolling and pinching on the screen of her smartphone for a bit, she asked me if I’d ever heard of Sundown Town, Nevada? Despite having called Reno home for almost 30 years, I had not heard of such a place. I consider myself a connoisseur of Reno history, but I had never come across anything even remotely similar in name to Sundown Town. So, I turned to the internet to help me (and my daughter) learn more. And, as it turns out Sundown Town was a real place. According to WashoeValley.org, Sundown Town was an amusement park built in 1960 in the hills above Old Washoe City. It was built on the shores of Joy Lake and included a saloon, a jail, a blacksmith shop, and a livery stable. It offered stagecoach rides, 14
HERITAGE
gunfights, and a trained bull to entertain visitors. The park was the brainchild of Buster Keaton, Jr., son of the silent film star. He and a couple of partners envisioned Sundown Town as an old west getaway for visitors to Reno, and they saw it becoming very popular, kind of like Disneyland. Apparently, the idea wasn’t as attractive as a theme park run by a certain cartoon mouse, because by 1963 the park was closed and sold. A few years later the Ponderosa Ranch, located up at Lake Tahoe, used the same concept and made it profitable for a while, but even it ended up closing in 2004. Today, only remnants of Sundown Town are rumored to exist. Many of the buildings were destroyed in a fire in 1966. Currently, the site of Sundown Town is on an 80-acre privately owned parcel. Maybe someday Sundown Town will reopen so that we can relive the excitement of an old west theme park.
