March 18, 2024 • 33 mins
Divorce ranches sprung up in the 1930s when Nevada relaxed its divorce laws. This unique and controversial style of resort was incredibly popular for several decades before becoming obsolete.
Research:
- Brean, Henry. “The rise and fall of Reno's quickie divorce industry.” Reno Gazette Journal. Sept. 18, 2017. https://www.rgj.com/story/life/2017/09/18/rise-and-fall-renos-quickie-divorce-industry/677065001/
- Bromley, John. “Two ‘Divorce Ranches’ Still Thriving.” Nevada State Journal. April 27, 1969. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1010901428/?terms=divorce%20ranch&match=1
- Miller, Wendy. “Divorce Ranch Owners Take Issue With Magazine Story.” Nevada State Journal. July 8, 1965. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1010619253/?terms=divorce%20ranch&match=1
- “Editor’s Comment – Not New.” Los Angeles Evening Citizen News. June 5, 1931. https://www.newspapers.com/image/683040112/?terms=nevada%20divorce&match=1
- Flat Rate Divorce Ranch Neely’s Latest Venture.” Shamokin News-Dispatch. January 7, 1932. https://www.newspapers.com/image/68323301/?terms=divorce%20ranch&match=1
- “High Society.” Reno Divorce History. https://renodivorcehistory.org/themes/the-rich-and-famous/high-society/
- Holmes, A.S. (1999). “Don’t Frighten the Horses”: the Russell Divorce Case. In: Robb, G., Erber, N. (eds) Disorder in the Court. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403934314_8
- Jain, Priya. “Betty Goes Reno.” Slate. July 21, 2010. https://slate.com/culture/2010/07/a-visit-to-the-glamorous-divorce-ranches-of-the-mad-men-era.html
- “Mrs. Corey Gets a Divorce in Four Hours.” Reno Gazette-Journal. July 30, 1906. https://www.newspapers.com/image/147027965/?terms=Laura%20Corey&match=1
- “Nevada Divorces Invalid.” Fort Worth Star Telegram. Aug. 10, 1931. https://www.newspapers.com/image/635854363/?terms=nevada%20divorce&match=1
- Nevada State Legislature. “CHAPTER 125 - DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE.” https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-125.html
- “Nevada;s Easy Divorces O.K. in Other States.” Evansville Press. June 9, 1931. https://www.newspapers.com/image/764481281/?terms=nevada%20divorce&match=1
- “Reno Divorce History.” University of Nevada, Reno Libraries. https://renodivorcehistory.org/
- Salisbury, Vanita. “Welcome to Splitsville: How Reno Became the Divorce Capital of the World.” Thrillist. July 22, 2022. https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/nevada-divorce-ranches-history
- Savanapridi, Shane. “Las Vegas Divorce Ranches.” City of Las Vegas. Feb. 14, 2020. https://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/News/Blog/Detail/las-vegas-divorce-ranches#:~:text=The%20divorce%20ranch%20was%20the,bills%20to%20spur%20economic%20growth.
- “Sisters Tell Tales From The 'Divorce Ranch.’” StoryCorps. NPR. July 16, 2010. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128545233
- Wernick, Robert. “Where You Went if You Really Had to Get Unhitched.” Smithsonian. June 1996. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-you-went-if-you-really-had-to-get-unhitched-1-41543097/
- Vlosky, Denese Ashbaugh, and Pamela A. Monroe. “The Effective Dates of No-Fault Divorce Laws in the 50 States.” Family Relations, vol. 51, no. 4, 2002, pp. 317–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3700329
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And this topic came
to my attention while I was working on research for
our recent Harrison Dyer episode. In that episode, we talked
(00:24):
about how Dyer's paramore, Wileska Allen, moved to Reno, Nevada
in the early nineteen twenties to establish residency so that
she could divorce her imaginary husband, Wilfred P. Allen. That's
a whole story. If you don't know it, you can
go listen to that episode because it's too much to
explain it an intro. It's a hall journey. And another
(00:44):
podcast subject head a hopper start in a movie in
nineteen twenty seven called a Reno Divorce, And all of
this has kind of been playing in the background of
my brain and going we should talk about Reno and divorces.
Reno and Nevada have long been wrecked as divorce friendly,
so I got to think about how that happened. And
the topic that we're talking about today specifically sort of
(01:07):
we're talking about a lot of it is divorce ranches,
which didn't really come about until after Wilesca's time. There
there were things like it going on, but they weren't
really like pitched as this is a divorce ranch. Divorce
ranches sprung up in the nineteen thirties when the state
relaxed its laws even further regarding divorce and residency. So
(01:30):
today we will talk about the state's relationship with divorce,
how it became the divorce capital of the country, and
why this unique and controversial style of resort, the divorce
ranch was so popular for several decades and then became obsolete. So,
as Holly just mentioned, divorce was part of Nevada's identity
well before the nineteen thirties, but it was definitely not
(01:52):
the first place in North America to allow or even
be known for the availability of divorce. And like a
legal system context, there was divorce in the colonies. The
first was a bigamy case in the Massachusetts Colony in
sixteen forty three, and as the United States was formed
and people moved west from the Atlantic coast, the places
(02:13):
at the edges of westward expansion tended to be the
most hospitable for a legal breakup of a marriage. It's
kind of a pattern in social expectations and moving west. Yeah,
in some cases that was far away from established communities,
so it was easy for someone to start a new life.
(02:34):
In other ways, it was just a place that was inhospitable,
so people were worried about other stuff. You want to
get divorced, go crazy. We really need to make sure
that everyone eats enough. It was it was just not
a priority to really be particular and clamped down regarding divorce.
So when Nevada became a territory in eighteen sixty one,
it quickly became a divorce haven. Virginia City, which sits
(02:58):
to the east of Lake Tahose northern Sure, became known
as the City of Divorces. When Nevada gained statehood in
the eighteen sixty four the state constitution included the same
relatively liberal laws regarding divorce that the territory had. It
also included the same requirement for residency that the territory
(03:18):
had had, which was six months. Because Nevada's legislature was
amenable to relatively quick and easy divorces, it, like other
territories and states with similar laws, became very attractive to
legal firms from the East Coast. Those firms would set
up outpost offices in these places so that they could
enjoy the steady business of divorce cases. This helped establish
(03:41):
the idea of divorce mills. In addition to the legislation
that was in place, lawyers and places like New York
or Chicago or other big cities would often encourage their
clients who were seeking divorce to go to one of
the places where it was easier to get one. They'd
spend the required amount of time there to declare themselves
a resident, and then get their divorce. Even with this
(04:03):
wait time to establish residency, this often was a much
faster process than it would have been back home, as
many states had really long waiting periods after filing. When
we say it was easier to obtain the divorce, it
was a lot easier, and a lot of states, including
New York, to get a divorce you had to have
(04:24):
proof that your spouse had committed adultery, things like cruelty
or abuse. They were not enough. Nevada had a lot
more ways that you could claim that a divorce was
a necessity. Yeah, we'll talk about some of those in
just a bit, but this all quickly led to high
profile people hoping to rapidly move on from unwanted marriages
(04:46):
in the state. We'll talk about several of these today,
but one of the first was Bertrand Russell's older brother,
John Francis Stanley Russell, who was the second Earl Russell.
He may be an episode topic in the future. He's
quite a t to me. His divorce saga is long
and kind of intense. Both he and his wife Mabel
(05:06):
wanted out of the marriage and they found it impossible
within the British legal system. For a long time, the
two of them pretty much lived separately and they kept
trying through the British courts to gain a divorce without success.
But then when Francis fell in love with Molly Somerville,
who was also married at the time, he decided that
(05:26):
he wanted to hasten a dissolution of his marriage and Molly's,
so he and his mistress went to Nevada. After spending
six months at Lake Tahoe, Molly and Francis each got
divorces from their spouses who were back in England, and
then the two of them got married in Reno the
next day. These divorces were not going to be recognized
(05:50):
as legal in Britain, and both Francis and Molly knew that,
But in Francis's case, he was hoping this would create
a scenario where his wife, Mabel, could and show clear
evidence that she had been abandoned by her husband, so
their divorce would finally be granted. He even set aside
a sum of money for Mabel to keep the whole
(06:11):
thing as smooth and simple as possible. That did not
work out as planned, though, While Molly's husband had also
filed for divorce and they were able to settle this
matter uncontested, and while Mabel wanted a divorce as well,
Russell was arrested and tried for bigamy. That is its
own whole story about why he was arrested. It was
(06:33):
not very common to prosecute bigamy in Britain at the time,
but that's a different story for another day. Reno really
did become a big destination for would be divorcees after
a woman named Laura Corey spent time there before receiving
her divorce from William Ellis Corey, who was president of
US Steel Corporation. This was a divorce that William wanted
(06:57):
he had started an affair with an actress named Mabel
Gilman and he wanted to be free to start a
life with her. And Corey paid his wife Laura one
million dollars for a divorce. This was in the early
nineteen hundred, so that was a lot of money, and
he asked her to travel to Nevada to live for
the requisite six months at the time to declare residency
(07:18):
and file, which she did. And this was another high
profile case that was covered in papers across the country
and it ended up with Laura getting full custody of
their son and a whole lot more money. And because
this was a very wealthy, stylish family from the United States,
it helped create this sort of halo effect around Reno
(07:39):
in particular as the place where wealthy and important people
would go to get their divorces. Soon, Reno and Nevada
overall were the preferred destinations among the options for relatively
expedient divorces in the United States. Divorce tourism grew so
rapidly in Reno in the first decade of the night
(07:59):
teen hundreds that much of the city was built to
accommodate it. What had been a relatively small town of
several thousand residents suddenly had a need for housing for
this constant influx of not quite permanent residents. This included apartments, hotels,
boarding houses, and in some cases private homes that were
rented out by the room or in their entirety. There
(08:23):
was also a boom and entertainment venues and restaurants to
keep all these newcomers fed and occupied. In the nineteen twenties,
dude ranches started to dot the suburban landscape. They would
offer a variety of amenities alongside outdoorsy activities like horseback
riding and shooting. Most of their visitors were women waiting
(08:43):
out this residency rule. All of this led to Reno
taking over the nickname of divorce capital of the country.
People started referring to the act of going to Nevada
for a fresh start as the Reno cure. That title
of dev capital was not one that everyone who lived
in Reno appreciated, and because of ongoing complaints and campaigning
(09:07):
from various groups, including churches and women's groups, the length
of time required for residency was lengthened in the nineteen
teens from six months to one year. This, of course,
resulted in fewer divorces, which was the goal of those
groups that had been lobbying for this change, But it
also meant that the city that had built an economy
(09:28):
on wealthy divorce seekers over the prior decade was suddenly
left struggling financially because people were not willing to go
somewhere for a year the way they would for six months.
That law was changed back to the six month wait
period for the economic needs of the state. The next
divorce of the rich and famous to put Reno in
(09:49):
national headlines was that of Silent film star Mary Pickford.
We talked about Pickford in one of our eponymous food
episodes when we talked about Fetccini Alfredo. We mentioned that
she and Douglas Fairbanks fell in love with the dish
on their honeymoon. That marriage happened after Pickford got a
quickie Nevada divorce from her first husband, Owen Moore, which
(10:09):
she did in nineteen twenty. Nevada also gained a revenue
stream from quickie weddings around this time. That started in
the late nineteen twenties because while other states were tightening
their laws and establishing things like waiting periods and blood
tests before a couple could be married. Nevada required none
of that. Still, after the nineteen twenty nine stock market crash,
(10:31):
the revenue from those dropped off, along with everything else.
That crash and the depression that followed ushered in the
time of the divorce ranch. We will talk about that
right after we pause for a sponsor break. Nevada economics
(10:54):
once again led to a shift in residency laws with
the hopes that divorce tourism would bring in more cash flow.
In nineteen thirty one, the Great Depression was in full
swing and the state's finances were really hurting. It was
harder and harder for people to come up with the
money for an extended stay in Reno or elsewhere in
the state just to get a divorce. In nineteen twenty seven,
(11:17):
the state legislature had already dropped the residency requirement to
just three months, so it was not as expensive as
it had been at six months, of course, but there
were still far fewer temporary residents patronizing their hotels, their
du branches, their restaurants, and their speakeasies. That year, Nevada
made two important changes to state law, which were intended
(11:39):
to improve the state's finances and lore tourists. The first
was the Wide Open Gambling Act, which, as its name suggests,
made gambling legal in the state, and the second was
that in March of nineteen thirty one, Nevada opted to
shift to a six week waiting period for residency, much
shorter than the prior three month period and way shorter,
(12:03):
way way shorter than the one year that most other
states required. It also added wording that a person could
ask for a divorce based on what was described as
extreme cruelty entirely mental in nature, but that was way
easier to claim than adultery or abandonment, which was what
was required in other places, and also other places required
(12:26):
proof of those claims. Yeah, that extreme cruelty clause gets
discussed a lot in anyone writing about this history, because
in some cases it was like not maybe what you
would think of as something extremely cruel, but like things
like my husband won't let me play the radio in
the house, or like, in some cases there was obviously
(12:47):
genuine cruelty, I don't want to downplay that, but in
some cases they didn't have to really come up with
anything heavy to get the divorce moved right through this
shift in divorce laws was recorded in the Nevada lature
as follows. Section twenty two. Divorced from the bonds of
matrimony may be obtained by complaint under oath to the
district Court of any county in which the cause therefore
(13:10):
shall have accrued, or in which the defendant shall reside
or be found, or in which the plaintiff shall reside,
or in which the parties last cohabitated, or if plaintiffs
shall have resided six weeks in the state before suit
be brought for the following causes, or any other causes
provided by law so First impotency at the time of
(13:31):
marriage continuing to the time of divorce. Second adultery since
the marriage remaining unforgiven. Third willful desertion at any time
of either party by the other for the period of
one year. Fourth conviction of a felony or infamous crime.
Fifth habitual gross drunkenness contracted since marriage of either party,
(13:52):
which shall incapacitate such party from contributing his or her
share to the support of the family. Sixth extreme crew
cruelty in either party. Seventh neglect of the husband for
the period of one year. To provide the common necessaries
of life when such neglect is not the result of
poverty on the part of the husband, which he could
not avoid by ordinary industry. Eighth, insanity existing for two
(14:16):
years prior to the commencement of the action. That last
one had additional language as well, requiring corroborative evidence. We've
talked about instances in history on the show where a
husband has declared that his wife was insane to try
to get a divorce without needing any other verification or
examination of that claim. This additional language was there to
(14:40):
prevent that kind of situation. The new version of the
Divorce Act went into effect on May first, nineteen thirty one.
A reported three hundred new divorce cases were filed that morning,
But the new law also kicked off a lot of
controversy around the United States. There were a number of states,
at least prominent judges within a number of states that
(15:03):
did not want to recognize Nevada divorces as legal because
of the looser regulations. Almost immediately, newspapers around the nation
included coverage of this issue and featured opinions and statements
given by various judges on the matter. Illinois, in particular,
was the first to challenge the validity of Nevada divorces.
(15:24):
Maryland also would not recognize Nevada divorces initially, and Tennessee
was not happy about it, but had not had any
cases come up for them to really examine. And then
when Georgia authorities were question on the matter, they just
were not sure if Nevada divorces would stand in their state.
Just a month after the Nevada six week residency law
went into effect, the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News ran
(15:48):
a lengthy editorial on Quickie divorces. It read quote, lawyers
generally throughout the country know that citizens of one state
cannot legally escape the divorce laws of their own state
by taking temporary sojourn in another state. Nevada divorces are
good only as long as they are accepted by both parties.
(16:08):
But let one party to the marriage raise objection in
the state in which both parties are residents, and the
law will support the objection. Nevada divorces are founded on perjury.
Parties to divorce cases in Nevada are asked not only
if they are residents of the state, but if they
intend to be residents thereof. They always answer in the affirmative,
(16:29):
although at the time of the answer they have their
tickets purchased to go back home. The Nevada divorce mill
may lead to a national uniform divorce law. Protection of
the rights of women and children may require such a step.
Nevada's easy divorce laws may be all right in many cases,
but perjury is not to be approved, and neglect of
(16:50):
the rights of children are not to be approved. Ultimately,
Nevada divorces were deemed legal and were upheld by all
the other states by December of nineteen thirty one. So
the same year this law went into effect, divorce ranches
were hitting the papers. Many papers ran a story with
the headline divorce ranch established at Reno by Vanderbilt for
(17:12):
freedom seekers, decree and grand time, all for five hundred dollars,
So this literally was like syndicated in all of the papers,
and many instances of this article opened with what amounted
to kind of an advertisement for Vanderbilt's new business, which read,
in part quote, no longer need the ordeal of interviewing lawyers,
(17:32):
attending courts, and such tiring details prevent the freedom seeking
husband or wife from cutting loose from the unwanted partner.
Thanks to Cornelius Vanderbilt Junior, everything is now plain sailing
for the one who desires to be rid of the
marital shackles. Neely, as he is affectionately called, has opened
up a divorce ranch at Indian Springs Oasis near Reno,
(17:55):
where all one has to do is check in and
spend six weeks of entertainment while the manager attends to
all troublesome details of severing the tie that binds. It
goes on to explain that the small charge of five
hundred dollars covers quote, room and board for six weeks
plus entertainment horseback riding, tennis, swimming, and so forth. It
(18:15):
also mentions that Vanderbilt has hired a manager named Mary
Gratchy to handle all of the business, including talking to
lawyers for the guests, and that if this venture succeeds,
the business will expand into a chain quote within a
convenient radius of the divorce mills at Reno. It touts
that manager Gratcy will quote do one hundred and one
(18:35):
of those annoying little jobs that take all the fun
out of divorce. This article was likely the first introduction
a lot of readers around the country had to the
concept of a resort for getting divorced, and it describes
how easy and pleasurable it will be for guests to
go on vacation and do all the things they would
enjoy and a regular ranch stay with the added legal
(18:58):
benefit of handling the divorce when this day is over.
Vanderbilt is quoted in the article saying, quote, give the
public what it wants, do it cheaply and with the
minimum amount of trouble to the customer. This first ranch
was called lazy Me, and it developed a reputation as
a place where not only could a person wait for
their divorce, but they could also potentially enjoy and no
(19:20):
strings attached dalliance with somebody from the staff. Vanderbilt, who
was an outcast from high society, got a book out
of the business. But it does not appear that he
stayed in there. No. I kept trying to hunt down,
like did he ever open up his chain? He just
kind of vanishes from this whole project after a while.
(19:42):
After he wrote his book. I think he was like done.
Most of the divorce ranches in the nineteen thirties were
in or around Reno, but that changed at the end
of the decade, and we'll talk about why after we
hear from the sponsors that keeps stuff you missed in
history class. Going prior to nineteen thirty nine, most hopeful
(20:09):
divorcees went to Reno. That was where the divorce ranches
were mostly clustered. But that year nineteen thirty nine, Clark
Gable's second wife, Maria Franklin Prentiss Lucas Langham, who went
by Riha, had a lengthy stay in Las Vegas to
establish residency so she could divorce her movie star husband.
The couple had gotten married in nineteen thirty one, when
(20:31):
Gable's career in film was just beginning. Ria was seventeen
years older than Gable and had just gotten divorced from
her third husband when the two met in nineteen twenty eight.
Their courtship was one in which the wealthy socialite Ria
took care of the younger Gable financially, helping him develop
his stylish image. But as Gable had become a movie star,
(20:53):
he had also been seen around Los Angeles with many
women who were not Ria and many of his cos
and it was apparent that this marriage was not a
happy one, so Ria moved to Nevada. But she went,
as we said, not to Reno, but to Las Vegas.
She asked only that she be given privacy, and in
exchange she gave an interview to the Las Vegas Review Journal.
(21:17):
This was a deal she arranged with the Las Vegas
Chamber of Commerce. That interview was accompanied by photos of
Langham having a wonderful time enjoying a variety of leisure activities,
including visiting the casinos of Vegas, and it put Vegas
on the map as a divorce resort. Soon the city
had its fair share of divorce ranches. The year after
(21:40):
Rea lanham stay an endorsement of Las Vegas, the Vegas
Strip was added to the city's offerings, and it cemented
its place as a destinations for weddings, divorces, and gambling.
While divorce ranches appealed to people with enough money to
spend five hundred dollars to while away their residency requirement,
there were also much less glamorous places popping up to
(22:03):
serve the needs of the less affluent in Reno in Vegas.
These were sometimes dormitory style boarding houses for women, where
they would share a room and a bathroom with you know,
anywhere from four to eight people. They were not really
having the time of their lives, but they were still
getting their divorces, and they were still boosting the area's economy.
(22:24):
By the end of the nineteen thirties, Nevada was home
to five percent of the divorces in the United States.
That may not sound like all that much, but its
population made up less than one tenth of a percent
of the country's total. There were still plenty of famous
and glitzy visitors to the divorce hub of the country
over the years. In nineteen fifty one, Rita Hayworth famously
(22:47):
went to Lake Tahoe for six weeks to file for
divorce from her third husband, Prince Ali Khan. The couple
had been together for two years when Hayworth left with
their toddler daughter to petition for divorce on the rounds
of extreme cruelty entirely mental in nature. When Kroner Eddie
Fisher decided to divorce Debbie Reynolds to marry Elizabeth Taylor
(23:09):
in a huge scandal that eventually cost him professional opportunities,
he went to Vegas to wait out the six week
waiting period. Fisher combined his Nevada residency accrual with work,
and he got a job singing on the Las Vegas
Strip at the Tropicana. Elizabeth Taylor was said to have
often been at his shows as the pair waited for
(23:29):
his divorce. The culture of these divorce ranches, at whatever
economic level a person could afford to stay, was really fascinating.
The six week stay afforded a variety of experiences for people,
and for many of the women who went there, it
was a taste of freedom that they really weren't accustomed to.
In some cases, divorce branches offered a sense of community.
(23:52):
People were all going through the exact same experience, and
there are a number of accounts that mentioned close friendships
that people formed there. For someone who wanted to experience
the freedom of a life unhindered by attachment, there were
plenty of diversions and places to visit. Some ranches and
boarding houses even assisted with childcare for mothers who had
(24:13):
arrived with their little ones, enabling mom to have a
night on the town whenever she desired. In twenty ten,
two sisters, Beth Ward and Robbie McBride shared their story
of growing up on a divorce ranch run by their
parents for NPR Story Corps. One of the things that
the sisters mentioned was the fact that their mother would
go to court with the women who stayed at their
(24:35):
family's ranch, which was Whitney Ranch, and she would testify
that that woman had indeed been living with them for
the preceding six weeks. They were both very adamant that
their mother was very adamant that she would never lie,
so if a guest asked her to vouch for having
seen them, and she had, she would not do it.
This practice, though, of an owner, a manager, or employee
(24:57):
of a ranch being the person to vouch for person's
resident status, was very common practice. Ward and McBride shared
stories of guests who were in some cases truly heartbroken
and cried throughout their stay, as well as people who
sometimes brought someone else with them, who they frequently called
their cousins. These were usually men that the women involved
(25:18):
were intending to be with once their divorce was final,
so they would book two rooms essentially, one for them
one for their cousin. Probably had some time for romance
in the six weeks they were there, and then at
the end they could get married. Although some of these
guests were unhappy to be leaving their marriages behind. Ward
told story core quote as a whole most of the
(25:39):
people who came there they wanted a divorce, so it
wasn't an unhappy time for them. They just thought it
was great that there was some place they could come
to get one. Beth Ward was married herself, and she
met her second husband when his wife was at the
ranch for a divorce. I love that little detail though.
One popular image of the divorce ranch is that it
(26:00):
was kind of a place where wealthy people played and
got into all manner of frivolity, of what you might
think of as a less than wholesome nature. There were
also ranch owners who spoke against that image. In an
article in the Nevada State Journal in July nineteen sixty five,
several ranch owners tried to correct some of the information
that had become part of the popular lore of divorce ranches.
(26:23):
This was actually in direct response to a prior article
that was written by journalist Robert Warnick, but this piece
overall also sought to dispel a lot of widely held
myths about the industry in statements from ranch owners. Those
owners were Missus L. M. Whitney, Harry Dracart, Missus Bertha Winnie,
and hughes Porter. Drakart incidentally was happy with Warnick's piece,
(26:46):
but that's probably because that original article named Drackart's Donner
Trail Ranch as the last divorce ranch in the state
at the time, which it absolutely was not. But one
point of contention was the insinuation that ranch hand routinely
had sexual relationships with guests. Hughes Porter told the paper, quote,
we don't allow them, meaning the wranglers, to flirt. We've
(27:09):
had the other type of ranch hand. We had to
get rid of them. The divorce ranches continued for decades,
although they did wane over time. In nineteen sixty nine,
an article ran in the Nevada State Journal under the
headline two Divorce Ranches Still Thriving. It calls out specifically
the Donner Trail Ranch and Whitney's Guest Ranch and talks
about the many ways that these two ranches continue to
(27:32):
keep guests happy, busy, and well cared for during their
six weeks of living in the state. The article notes, quote,
with Reno's reputation as a divorce mill still going full
speed ahead at the ranch, the only cloud on the
horizon is the proposed dam across the Trucky Stream downriver
from the ranch house. That take probably seemed a little
(27:53):
quaint just a few months later, and that's because in
nineteen sixty nine, California divorce law shifted in a way
that spelled out the end of the divorce ranch. The
first no fault divorce bill, the Family Law Act of
nineteen sixty nine, was signed by California Governor Ronald Reagan
and went into effect on January first, nineteen seventy and
(28:15):
that signaled the end of the need for divorce ranches.
Though there were people getting divorces well before this, this
piece of legislation is often considered a big step in
destigmatizing it. Kansas and Texas followed with their own no
fault divorce legislation in nineteen seventy, and in nineteen seventy one, Alabama, Florida,
(28:36):
New Hampshire, and North Dakota accepted no fault divorce many
other states in the time since then. In the space
of just a few months, divorce ranches were kind of
relegated to the role of an unnecessary relic from a
previous legislative age. Almost overnight, Nevada's image seemed to reconfigure
itself to be about easy weddings and gambling alone. You
(28:58):
can still visit to divorce ranches, sort of. Two of
the places that catered to the divorce set are now
inside parks in the Las Vegas area that are open
to visitors. Floyd Lamb Park at Tooley Springs includes remnants
of the Tooley Springs Ranch, and Loreensey Park is home
to Twin Lakes Lodge that used to be a regular
(29:19):
extended stay stop for divorce seekers. I am so fascinated
by this whole concept for so many reasons, and I
have so much stuff to stay behind the scenes on
Friday divorce Ranches. In the meantime, I have an email
that made me squinky a little bit, but also delayed.
(29:44):
So here we go. This is from our listener Whitney,
who writes, Hi, ladies, I've been listening to your show
for years, including going through most of the back catalog
when I first started listening five or six years ago.
I am a huge history nerd and always include your
podcast in my list of thank you. The episode, including
Sloppy Joe's, made me remember a dish my grandmother and
(30:05):
mother used to make moons Ago called spoon Burgers. It
seems to be even a step down from Sloppy Joe's
in its money saving status. My grandmother was a child
during the Great Depression, and my mother was a child
in nineteen fifties northeast Mississippi, which was definitely a place
where the prosperity after World War II arrived late. This
version of Sloppy Joe's includes ground beef, a can of
(30:28):
Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable Alphabet soup with ketchup and mustard added
for some extra zing. Whitney added a little emoticon face
that is exactly the replica of my face, because this
does not sound yummy to be. I read this email
first thing in the morning, when I felt like I
(30:49):
was still trying to, you know, acclimate myself to being
awake for the day, and I was like, oh, no,
this is not a combination of things that I'm okay
with right now. No, Whitney continues. It is served on
a bun with yellow mustard. This is a comfort dish
from my childhood. However I can't quite convince my husband
(31:10):
to try it. Thank you so much for your wonderful show.
I look forward to Mondays and Wednesdays because I know
I will have a new episode. I'm attaching a photo
of our hound dog mix Louis for the Pet tax.
He is a sassy two year old rescue who is
the epitome of a talkative hound dog. I have included
a photo of him pretending that we don't feed him. Listen,
I don't know. This looks like this dog has never
(31:31):
once been fed. He is clearly very very neglected. No,
Louie is gorgeous. I have a soft spot for hounds.
My parents used to breed hounds when I was a kid,
So like, show me a hounddog and I'm happy, and
he is beautiful and I want to kiss that snoot
so hard. I'm kind of with your husband, Whitney. I
don't want to eat that either. Yeah. I think it
was the mustard that really tipped me into the being
(31:54):
like mm mmmm, and I really like mustard. But something
about mustard in addition to all the other things why
I was like, ah, no, no, no, too much that
for me. It's the it's kind of the same problem.
I have a sloppy Joe. I'm sure I've talked about
on the show before. I do not like stews. Generally me,
I don't like gloopy food that combines a lot of
other food into some sort of conglomerate. It's just not
(32:16):
my thing, so for me, nay, But I'm sure you know,
with the right combo, maybe it is delicious. I might
need a couple of cocktails before I like to lower
my resistance. But I bet Louie would love these. Yeah,
because he's never been fed, he's desperate, he's so pretty.
(32:37):
I kind of can't get over it. I might have
a dog crush on Louie Whitney. Thank you for sharing
this story with us. You know, there are lots of
foods that we all eat that, especially if they were
like a childhood thing, that is not for everybody, And
I get it, so please don't think that I'm mocking
your childhood comfort food. It just does not sound like
something I would love. But there are lots of things
(32:58):
I eat that other people would be like. Girl, No,
thank you, no judgment, just not my jam. If you
would like to write to us and share your various
family recipes that people may or may not enjoy, you
could do that. We are at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com. You can also find us on social media
as Missed in History and if you have not yet subscribed,
(33:21):
you can do that on the iHeartRadio app or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And this topic came
to my attention while I was working on research for
our recent Harrison Dyer episode. In that episode, we talked
(00:24):
about how Dyer's paramore, Wileska Allen, moved to Reno, Nevada
in the early nineteen twenties to establish residency so that
she could divorce her imaginary husband, Wilfred P. Allen. That's
a whole story. If you don't know it, you can
go listen to that episode because it's too much to
explain it an intro. It's a hall journey. And another
(00:44):
podcast subject head a hopper start in a movie in
nineteen twenty seven called a Reno Divorce, And all of
this has kind of been playing in the background of
my brain and going we should talk about Reno and divorces.
Reno and Nevada have long been wrecked as divorce friendly,
so I got to think about how that happened. And
the topic that we're talking about today specifically sort of
(01:07):
we're talking about a lot of it is divorce ranches,
which didn't really come about until after Wilesca's time. There
there were things like it going on, but they weren't
really like pitched as this is a divorce ranch. Divorce
ranches sprung up in the nineteen thirties when the state
relaxed its laws even further regarding divorce and residency. So
(01:30):
today we will talk about the state's relationship with divorce,
how it became the divorce capital of the country, and
why this unique and controversial style of resort, the divorce
ranch was so popular for several decades and then became obsolete. So,
as Holly just mentioned, divorce was part of Nevada's identity
well before the nineteen thirties, but it was definitely not
(01:52):
the first place in North America to allow or even
be known for the availability of divorce. And like a
legal system context, there was divorce in the colonies. The
first was a bigamy case in the Massachusetts Colony in
sixteen forty three, and as the United States was formed
and people moved west from the Atlantic coast, the places
(02:13):
at the edges of westward expansion tended to be the
most hospitable for a legal breakup of a marriage. It's
kind of a pattern in social expectations and moving west. Yeah,
in some cases that was far away from established communities,
so it was easy for someone to start a new life.
(02:34):
In other ways, it was just a place that was inhospitable,
so people were worried about other stuff. You want to
get divorced, go crazy. We really need to make sure
that everyone eats enough. It was it was just not
a priority to really be particular and clamped down regarding divorce.
So when Nevada became a territory in eighteen sixty one,
it quickly became a divorce haven. Virginia City, which sits
(02:58):
to the east of Lake Tahose northern Sure, became known
as the City of Divorces. When Nevada gained statehood in
the eighteen sixty four the state constitution included the same
relatively liberal laws regarding divorce that the territory had. It
also included the same requirement for residency that the territory
(03:18):
had had, which was six months. Because Nevada's legislature was
amenable to relatively quick and easy divorces, it, like other
territories and states with similar laws, became very attractive to
legal firms from the East Coast. Those firms would set
up outpost offices in these places so that they could
enjoy the steady business of divorce cases. This helped establish
(03:41):
the idea of divorce mills. In addition to the legislation
that was in place, lawyers and places like New York
or Chicago or other big cities would often encourage their
clients who were seeking divorce to go to one of
the places where it was easier to get one. They'd
spend the required amount of time there to declare themselves
a resident, and then get their divorce. Even with this
(04:03):
wait time to establish residency, this often was a much
faster process than it would have been back home, as
many states had really long waiting periods after filing. When
we say it was easier to obtain the divorce, it
was a lot easier, and a lot of states, including
New York, to get a divorce you had to have
(04:24):
proof that your spouse had committed adultery, things like cruelty
or abuse. They were not enough. Nevada had a lot
more ways that you could claim that a divorce was
a necessity. Yeah, we'll talk about some of those in
just a bit, but this all quickly led to high
profile people hoping to rapidly move on from unwanted marriages
(04:46):
in the state. We'll talk about several of these today,
but one of the first was Bertrand Russell's older brother,
John Francis Stanley Russell, who was the second Earl Russell.
He may be an episode topic in the future. He's
quite a t to me. His divorce saga is long
and kind of intense. Both he and his wife Mabel
(05:06):
wanted out of the marriage and they found it impossible
within the British legal system. For a long time, the
two of them pretty much lived separately and they kept
trying through the British courts to gain a divorce without success.
But then when Francis fell in love with Molly Somerville,
who was also married at the time, he decided that
(05:26):
he wanted to hasten a dissolution of his marriage and Molly's,
so he and his mistress went to Nevada. After spending
six months at Lake Tahoe, Molly and Francis each got
divorces from their spouses who were back in England, and
then the two of them got married in Reno the
next day. These divorces were not going to be recognized
(05:50):
as legal in Britain, and both Francis and Molly knew that,
But in Francis's case, he was hoping this would create
a scenario where his wife, Mabel, could and show clear
evidence that she had been abandoned by her husband, so
their divorce would finally be granted. He even set aside
a sum of money for Mabel to keep the whole
(06:11):
thing as smooth and simple as possible. That did not
work out as planned, though, While Molly's husband had also
filed for divorce and they were able to settle this
matter uncontested, and while Mabel wanted a divorce as well,
Russell was arrested and tried for bigamy. That is its
own whole story about why he was arrested. It was
(06:33):
not very common to prosecute bigamy in Britain at the time,
but that's a different story for another day. Reno really
did become a big destination for would be divorcees after
a woman named Laura Corey spent time there before receiving
her divorce from William Ellis Corey, who was president of
US Steel Corporation. This was a divorce that William wanted
(06:57):
he had started an affair with an actress named Mabel
Gilman and he wanted to be free to start a
life with her. And Corey paid his wife Laura one
million dollars for a divorce. This was in the early
nineteen hundred, so that was a lot of money, and
he asked her to travel to Nevada to live for
the requisite six months at the time to declare residency
(07:18):
and file, which she did. And this was another high
profile case that was covered in papers across the country
and it ended up with Laura getting full custody of
their son and a whole lot more money. And because
this was a very wealthy, stylish family from the United States,
it helped create this sort of halo effect around Reno
(07:39):
in particular as the place where wealthy and important people
would go to get their divorces. Soon, Reno and Nevada
overall were the preferred destinations among the options for relatively
expedient divorces in the United States. Divorce tourism grew so
rapidly in Reno in the first decade of the night
(07:59):
teen hundreds that much of the city was built to
accommodate it. What had been a relatively small town of
several thousand residents suddenly had a need for housing for
this constant influx of not quite permanent residents. This included apartments, hotels,
boarding houses, and in some cases private homes that were
rented out by the room or in their entirety. There
(08:23):
was also a boom and entertainment venues and restaurants to
keep all these newcomers fed and occupied. In the nineteen twenties,
dude ranches started to dot the suburban landscape. They would
offer a variety of amenities alongside outdoorsy activities like horseback
riding and shooting. Most of their visitors were women waiting
(08:43):
out this residency rule. All of this led to Reno
taking over the nickname of divorce capital of the country.
People started referring to the act of going to Nevada
for a fresh start as the Reno cure. That title
of dev capital was not one that everyone who lived
in Reno appreciated, and because of ongoing complaints and campaigning
(09:07):
from various groups, including churches and women's groups, the length
of time required for residency was lengthened in the nineteen
teens from six months to one year. This, of course,
resulted in fewer divorces, which was the goal of those
groups that had been lobbying for this change, But it
also meant that the city that had built an economy
(09:28):
on wealthy divorce seekers over the prior decade was suddenly
left struggling financially because people were not willing to go
somewhere for a year the way they would for six months.
That law was changed back to the six month wait
period for the economic needs of the state. The next
divorce of the rich and famous to put Reno in
(09:49):
national headlines was that of Silent film star Mary Pickford.
We talked about Pickford in one of our eponymous food
episodes when we talked about Fetccini Alfredo. We mentioned that
she and Douglas Fairbanks fell in love with the dish
on their honeymoon. That marriage happened after Pickford got a
quickie Nevada divorce from her first husband, Owen Moore, which
(10:09):
she did in nineteen twenty. Nevada also gained a revenue
stream from quickie weddings around this time. That started in
the late nineteen twenties because while other states were tightening
their laws and establishing things like waiting periods and blood
tests before a couple could be married. Nevada required none
of that. Still, after the nineteen twenty nine stock market crash,
(10:31):
the revenue from those dropped off, along with everything else.
That crash and the depression that followed ushered in the
time of the divorce ranch. We will talk about that
right after we pause for a sponsor break. Nevada economics
(10:54):
once again led to a shift in residency laws with
the hopes that divorce tourism would bring in more cash flow.
In nineteen thirty one, the Great Depression was in full
swing and the state's finances were really hurting. It was
harder and harder for people to come up with the
money for an extended stay in Reno or elsewhere in
the state just to get a divorce. In nineteen twenty seven,
(11:17):
the state legislature had already dropped the residency requirement to
just three months, so it was not as expensive as
it had been at six months, of course, but there
were still far fewer temporary residents patronizing their hotels, their
du branches, their restaurants, and their speakeasies. That year, Nevada
made two important changes to state law, which were intended
(11:39):
to improve the state's finances and lore tourists. The first
was the Wide Open Gambling Act, which, as its name suggests,
made gambling legal in the state, and the second was
that in March of nineteen thirty one, Nevada opted to
shift to a six week waiting period for residency, much
shorter than the prior three month period and way shorter,
(12:03):
way way shorter than the one year that most other
states required. It also added wording that a person could
ask for a divorce based on what was described as
extreme cruelty entirely mental in nature, but that was way
easier to claim than adultery or abandonment, which was what
was required in other places, and also other places required
(12:26):
proof of those claims. Yeah, that extreme cruelty clause gets
discussed a lot in anyone writing about this history, because
in some cases it was like not maybe what you
would think of as something extremely cruel, but like things
like my husband won't let me play the radio in
the house, or like, in some cases there was obviously
(12:47):
genuine cruelty, I don't want to downplay that, but in
some cases they didn't have to really come up with
anything heavy to get the divorce moved right through this
shift in divorce laws was recorded in the Nevada lature
as follows. Section twenty two. Divorced from the bonds of
matrimony may be obtained by complaint under oath to the
district Court of any county in which the cause therefore
(13:10):
shall have accrued, or in which the defendant shall reside
or be found, or in which the plaintiff shall reside,
or in which the parties last cohabitated, or if plaintiffs
shall have resided six weeks in the state before suit
be brought for the following causes, or any other causes
provided by law so First impotency at the time of
(13:31):
marriage continuing to the time of divorce. Second adultery since
the marriage remaining unforgiven. Third willful desertion at any time
of either party by the other for the period of
one year. Fourth conviction of a felony or infamous crime.
Fifth habitual gross drunkenness contracted since marriage of either party,
(13:52):
which shall incapacitate such party from contributing his or her
share to the support of the family. Sixth extreme crew
cruelty in either party. Seventh neglect of the husband for
the period of one year. To provide the common necessaries
of life when such neglect is not the result of
poverty on the part of the husband, which he could
not avoid by ordinary industry. Eighth, insanity existing for two
(14:16):
years prior to the commencement of the action. That last
one had additional language as well, requiring corroborative evidence. We've
talked about instances in history on the show where a
husband has declared that his wife was insane to try
to get a divorce without needing any other verification or
examination of that claim. This additional language was there to
(14:40):
prevent that kind of situation. The new version of the
Divorce Act went into effect on May first, nineteen thirty one.
A reported three hundred new divorce cases were filed that morning,
But the new law also kicked off a lot of
controversy around the United States. There were a number of states,
at least prominent judges within a number of states that
(15:03):
did not want to recognize Nevada divorces as legal because
of the looser regulations. Almost immediately, newspapers around the nation
included coverage of this issue and featured opinions and statements
given by various judges on the matter. Illinois, in particular,
was the first to challenge the validity of Nevada divorces.
(15:24):
Maryland also would not recognize Nevada divorces initially, and Tennessee
was not happy about it, but had not had any
cases come up for them to really examine. And then
when Georgia authorities were question on the matter, they just
were not sure if Nevada divorces would stand in their state.
Just a month after the Nevada six week residency law
went into effect, the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News ran
(15:48):
a lengthy editorial on Quickie divorces. It read quote, lawyers
generally throughout the country know that citizens of one state
cannot legally escape the divorce laws of their own state
by taking temporary sojourn in another state. Nevada divorces are
good only as long as they are accepted by both parties.
(16:08):
But let one party to the marriage raise objection in
the state in which both parties are residents, and the
law will support the objection. Nevada divorces are founded on perjury.
Parties to divorce cases in Nevada are asked not only
if they are residents of the state, but if they
intend to be residents thereof. They always answer in the affirmative,
(16:29):
although at the time of the answer they have their
tickets purchased to go back home. The Nevada divorce mill
may lead to a national uniform divorce law. Protection of
the rights of women and children may require such a step.
Nevada's easy divorce laws may be all right in many cases,
but perjury is not to be approved, and neglect of
(16:50):
the rights of children are not to be approved. Ultimately,
Nevada divorces were deemed legal and were upheld by all
the other states by December of nineteen thirty one. So
the same year this law went into effect, divorce ranches
were hitting the papers. Many papers ran a story with
the headline divorce ranch established at Reno by Vanderbilt for
(17:12):
freedom seekers, decree and grand time, all for five hundred dollars,
So this literally was like syndicated in all of the papers,
and many instances of this article opened with what amounted
to kind of an advertisement for Vanderbilt's new business, which read,
in part quote, no longer need the ordeal of interviewing lawyers,
(17:32):
attending courts, and such tiring details prevent the freedom seeking
husband or wife from cutting loose from the unwanted partner.
Thanks to Cornelius Vanderbilt Junior, everything is now plain sailing
for the one who desires to be rid of the
marital shackles. Neely, as he is affectionately called, has opened
up a divorce ranch at Indian Springs Oasis near Reno,
(17:55):
where all one has to do is check in and
spend six weeks of entertainment while the manager attends to
all troublesome details of severing the tie that binds. It
goes on to explain that the small charge of five
hundred dollars covers quote, room and board for six weeks
plus entertainment horseback riding, tennis, swimming, and so forth. It
(18:15):
also mentions that Vanderbilt has hired a manager named Mary
Gratchy to handle all of the business, including talking to
lawyers for the guests, and that if this venture succeeds,
the business will expand into a chain quote within a
convenient radius of the divorce mills at Reno. It touts
that manager Gratcy will quote do one hundred and one
(18:35):
of those annoying little jobs that take all the fun
out of divorce. This article was likely the first introduction
a lot of readers around the country had to the
concept of a resort for getting divorced, and it describes
how easy and pleasurable it will be for guests to
go on vacation and do all the things they would
enjoy and a regular ranch stay with the added legal
(18:58):
benefit of handling the divorce when this day is over.
Vanderbilt is quoted in the article saying, quote, give the
public what it wants, do it cheaply and with the
minimum amount of trouble to the customer. This first ranch
was called lazy Me, and it developed a reputation as
a place where not only could a person wait for
their divorce, but they could also potentially enjoy and no
(19:20):
strings attached dalliance with somebody from the staff. Vanderbilt, who
was an outcast from high society, got a book out
of the business. But it does not appear that he
stayed in there. No. I kept trying to hunt down,
like did he ever open up his chain? He just
kind of vanishes from this whole project after a while.
(19:42):
After he wrote his book. I think he was like done.
Most of the divorce ranches in the nineteen thirties were
in or around Reno, but that changed at the end
of the decade, and we'll talk about why after we
hear from the sponsors that keeps stuff you missed in
history class. Going prior to nineteen thirty nine, most hopeful
(20:09):
divorcees went to Reno. That was where the divorce ranches
were mostly clustered. But that year nineteen thirty nine, Clark
Gable's second wife, Maria Franklin Prentiss Lucas Langham, who went
by Riha, had a lengthy stay in Las Vegas to
establish residency so she could divorce her movie star husband.
The couple had gotten married in nineteen thirty one, when
(20:31):
Gable's career in film was just beginning. Ria was seventeen
years older than Gable and had just gotten divorced from
her third husband when the two met in nineteen twenty eight.
Their courtship was one in which the wealthy socialite Ria
took care of the younger Gable financially, helping him develop
his stylish image. But as Gable had become a movie star,
(20:53):
he had also been seen around Los Angeles with many
women who were not Ria and many of his cos
and it was apparent that this marriage was not a
happy one, so Ria moved to Nevada. But she went,
as we said, not to Reno, but to Las Vegas.
She asked only that she be given privacy, and in
exchange she gave an interview to the Las Vegas Review Journal.
(21:17):
This was a deal she arranged with the Las Vegas
Chamber of Commerce. That interview was accompanied by photos of
Langham having a wonderful time enjoying a variety of leisure activities,
including visiting the casinos of Vegas, and it put Vegas
on the map as a divorce resort. Soon the city
had its fair share of divorce ranches. The year after
(21:40):
Rea lanham stay an endorsement of Las Vegas, the Vegas
Strip was added to the city's offerings, and it cemented
its place as a destinations for weddings, divorces, and gambling.
While divorce ranches appealed to people with enough money to
spend five hundred dollars to while away their residency requirement,
there were also much less glamorous places popping up to
(22:03):
serve the needs of the less affluent in Reno in Vegas.
These were sometimes dormitory style boarding houses for women, where
they would share a room and a bathroom with you know,
anywhere from four to eight people. They were not really
having the time of their lives, but they were still
getting their divorces, and they were still boosting the area's economy.
(22:24):
By the end of the nineteen thirties, Nevada was home
to five percent of the divorces in the United States.
That may not sound like all that much, but its
population made up less than one tenth of a percent
of the country's total. There were still plenty of famous
and glitzy visitors to the divorce hub of the country
over the years. In nineteen fifty one, Rita Hayworth famously
(22:47):
went to Lake Tahoe for six weeks to file for
divorce from her third husband, Prince Ali Khan. The couple
had been together for two years when Hayworth left with
their toddler daughter to petition for divorce on the rounds
of extreme cruelty entirely mental in nature. When Kroner Eddie
Fisher decided to divorce Debbie Reynolds to marry Elizabeth Taylor
(23:09):
in a huge scandal that eventually cost him professional opportunities,
he went to Vegas to wait out the six week
waiting period. Fisher combined his Nevada residency accrual with work,
and he got a job singing on the Las Vegas
Strip at the Tropicana. Elizabeth Taylor was said to have
often been at his shows as the pair waited for
(23:29):
his divorce. The culture of these divorce ranches, at whatever
economic level a person could afford to stay, was really fascinating.
The six week stay afforded a variety of experiences for people,
and for many of the women who went there, it
was a taste of freedom that they really weren't accustomed to.
In some cases, divorce branches offered a sense of community.
(23:52):
People were all going through the exact same experience, and
there are a number of accounts that mentioned close friendships
that people formed there. For someone who wanted to experience
the freedom of a life unhindered by attachment, there were
plenty of diversions and places to visit. Some ranches and
boarding houses even assisted with childcare for mothers who had
(24:13):
arrived with their little ones, enabling mom to have a
night on the town whenever she desired. In twenty ten,
two sisters, Beth Ward and Robbie McBride shared their story
of growing up on a divorce ranch run by their
parents for NPR Story Corps. One of the things that
the sisters mentioned was the fact that their mother would
go to court with the women who stayed at their
(24:35):
family's ranch, which was Whitney Ranch, and she would testify
that that woman had indeed been living with them for
the preceding six weeks. They were both very adamant that
their mother was very adamant that she would never lie,
so if a guest asked her to vouch for having
seen them, and she had, she would not do it.
This practice, though, of an owner, a manager, or employee
(24:57):
of a ranch being the person to vouch for person's
resident status, was very common practice. Ward and McBride shared
stories of guests who were in some cases truly heartbroken
and cried throughout their stay, as well as people who
sometimes brought someone else with them, who they frequently called
their cousins. These were usually men that the women involved
(25:18):
were intending to be with once their divorce was final,
so they would book two rooms essentially, one for them
one for their cousin. Probably had some time for romance
in the six weeks they were there, and then at
the end they could get married. Although some of these
guests were unhappy to be leaving their marriages behind. Ward
told story core quote as a whole most of the
(25:39):
people who came there they wanted a divorce, so it
wasn't an unhappy time for them. They just thought it
was great that there was some place they could come
to get one. Beth Ward was married herself, and she
met her second husband when his wife was at the
ranch for a divorce. I love that little detail though.
One popular image of the divorce ranch is that it
(26:00):
was kind of a place where wealthy people played and
got into all manner of frivolity, of what you might
think of as a less than wholesome nature. There were
also ranch owners who spoke against that image. In an
article in the Nevada State Journal in July nineteen sixty five,
several ranch owners tried to correct some of the information
that had become part of the popular lore of divorce ranches.
(26:23):
This was actually in direct response to a prior article
that was written by journalist Robert Warnick, but this piece
overall also sought to dispel a lot of widely held
myths about the industry in statements from ranch owners. Those
owners were Missus L. M. Whitney, Harry Dracart, Missus Bertha Winnie,
and hughes Porter. Drakart incidentally was happy with Warnick's piece,
(26:46):
but that's probably because that original article named Drackart's Donner
Trail Ranch as the last divorce ranch in the state
at the time, which it absolutely was not. But one
point of contention was the insinuation that ranch hand routinely
had sexual relationships with guests. Hughes Porter told the paper, quote,
we don't allow them, meaning the wranglers, to flirt. We've
(27:09):
had the other type of ranch hand. We had to
get rid of them. The divorce ranches continued for decades,
although they did wane over time. In nineteen sixty nine,
an article ran in the Nevada State Journal under the
headline two Divorce Ranches Still Thriving. It calls out specifically
the Donner Trail Ranch and Whitney's Guest Ranch and talks
about the many ways that these two ranches continue to
(27:32):
keep guests happy, busy, and well cared for during their
six weeks of living in the state. The article notes, quote,
with Reno's reputation as a divorce mill still going full
speed ahead at the ranch, the only cloud on the
horizon is the proposed dam across the Trucky Stream downriver
from the ranch house. That take probably seemed a little
(27:53):
quaint just a few months later, and that's because in
nineteen sixty nine, California divorce law shifted in a way
that spelled out the end of the divorce ranch. The
first no fault divorce bill, the Family Law Act of
nineteen sixty nine, was signed by California Governor Ronald Reagan
and went into effect on January first, nineteen seventy and
(28:15):
that signaled the end of the need for divorce ranches.
Though there were people getting divorces well before this, this
piece of legislation is often considered a big step in
destigmatizing it. Kansas and Texas followed with their own no
fault divorce legislation in nineteen seventy, and in nineteen seventy one, Alabama, Florida,
(28:36):
New Hampshire, and North Dakota accepted no fault divorce many
other states in the time since then. In the space
of just a few months, divorce ranches were kind of
relegated to the role of an unnecessary relic from a
previous legislative age. Almost overnight, Nevada's image seemed to reconfigure
itself to be about easy weddings and gambling alone. You
(28:58):
can still visit to divorce ranches, sort of. Two of
the places that catered to the divorce set are now
inside parks in the Las Vegas area that are open
to visitors. Floyd Lamb Park at Tooley Springs includes remnants
of the Tooley Springs Ranch, and Loreensey Park is home
to Twin Lakes Lodge that used to be a regular
(29:19):
extended stay stop for divorce seekers. I am so fascinated
by this whole concept for so many reasons, and I
have so much stuff to stay behind the scenes on
Friday divorce Ranches. In the meantime, I have an email
that made me squinky a little bit, but also delayed.
(29:44):
So here we go. This is from our listener Whitney,
who writes, Hi, ladies, I've been listening to your show
for years, including going through most of the back catalog
when I first started listening five or six years ago.
I am a huge history nerd and always include your
podcast in my list of thank you. The episode, including
Sloppy Joe's, made me remember a dish my grandmother and
(30:05):
mother used to make moons Ago called spoon Burgers. It
seems to be even a step down from Sloppy Joe's
in its money saving status. My grandmother was a child
during the Great Depression, and my mother was a child
in nineteen fifties northeast Mississippi, which was definitely a place
where the prosperity after World War II arrived late. This
version of Sloppy Joe's includes ground beef, a can of
(30:28):
Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable Alphabet soup with ketchup and mustard added
for some extra zing. Whitney added a little emoticon face
that is exactly the replica of my face, because this
does not sound yummy to be. I read this email
first thing in the morning, when I felt like I
(30:49):
was still trying to, you know, acclimate myself to being
awake for the day, and I was like, oh, no,
this is not a combination of things that I'm okay
with right now. No, Whitney continues. It is served on
a bun with yellow mustard. This is a comfort dish
from my childhood. However I can't quite convince my husband
(31:10):
to try it. Thank you so much for your wonderful show.
I look forward to Mondays and Wednesdays because I know
I will have a new episode. I'm attaching a photo
of our hound dog mix Louis for the Pet tax.
He is a sassy two year old rescue who is
the epitome of a talkative hound dog. I have included
a photo of him pretending that we don't feed him. Listen,
I don't know. This looks like this dog has never
(31:31):
once been fed. He is clearly very very neglected. No,
Louie is gorgeous. I have a soft spot for hounds.
My parents used to breed hounds when I was a kid,
So like, show me a hounddog and I'm happy, and
he is beautiful and I want to kiss that snoot
so hard. I'm kind of with your husband, Whitney. I
don't want to eat that either. Yeah. I think it
was the mustard that really tipped me into the being
(31:54):
like mm mmmm, and I really like mustard. But something
about mustard in addition to all the other things why
I was like, ah, no, no, no, too much that
for me. It's the it's kind of the same problem.
I have a sloppy Joe. I'm sure I've talked about
on the show before. I do not like stews. Generally me,
I don't like gloopy food that combines a lot of
other food into some sort of conglomerate. It's just not
(32:16):
my thing, so for me, nay, But I'm sure you know,
with the right combo, maybe it is delicious. I might
need a couple of cocktails before I like to lower
my resistance. But I bet Louie would love these. Yeah,
because he's never been fed, he's desperate, he's so pretty.
(32:37):
I kind of can't get over it. I might have
a dog crush on Louie Whitney. Thank you for sharing
this story with us. You know, there are lots of
foods that we all eat that, especially if they were
like a childhood thing, that is not for everybody, And
I get it, so please don't think that I'm mocking
your childhood comfort food. It just does not sound like
something I would love. But there are lots of things
(32:58):
I eat that other people would be like. Girl, No,
thank you, no judgment, just not my jam. If you
would like to write to us and share your various
family recipes that people may or may not enjoy, you
could do that. We are at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com. You can also find us on social media
as Missed in History and if you have not yet subscribed,
(33:21):
you can do that on the iHeartRadio app or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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