A Brief History of the Biggest Little Trailer Park: Sun Valley, Nevada
By Jonathan Cummins
Image/Seas of Trailers. Reno Evening Gazette, February 15, 1973.
In 1938, the Federal Government adopted the Small Tract Act. As a Homestead Era policy, the Small Tract Act was intended to encourage settlement in the West. The one requirement to secure a 5-acre tract of free land was to live on it permanently. By the 1950s, hundreds of small tracts north of Reno, Nevada were settled temporarily before changing hands again. The Bureau of Land Management had allowed settlers to use trailers to establish residency. Speculators bought up small tracts and subdivided the place into lots with a simple formula: dig a well, a septic tank, install a trailer. And with that, Sun Valley was born.
Land north of the city was appealing for suburban development, but trailers would be the norm. They enabled people to settle a harsh landscape, to have open space away from the city.
Reno residents know what it means to live in Sun Valley—stigmas of trailer living have roots in the hard realities of life there. Reno residents frequented Sun Valley for illegal garbage dumping, and by the late 1950s, the City of Reno installed a landfill nearby. Trash and trailer culture have been closely intertwined in Reno and Sun Valley’s history ever since, giving the stereotypes an unfortunate but accurate meaning.
Sun Valley residents responded with a strong sense of community. Cleanup days and month-long campaigns became a part of the Sun Valley way of life. Residents even fought to get Sun Valley annexed into one of the nearby cities in order to obtain better services—but with those services would come regulation and control. Residents were torn between the freedom and space of being left alone “out in the county” and seeking public support with the growing problem of waste that made life there even more difficult.
The brave western spirit lives on in Sun Valley, where residents have endured much social and political hardship in exchange for space, isolation, and freedom. In those seas of trailers live hard-working people who, with their ingenuity, settled a harsh land. By assembling a permanent place out of temporary housing, those residents have found a way of life informed by the beauty and the trials of trailer living. They have refined a sense of place like nowhere in the region.
Jonathan Cummins will be participating in A Virtual Salon: Valley of the Sun on Friday, July 17, 2020, at 6 pm PST on the Nevada Humanities Facebook page at facebook.com/nevadahumanities.
Double Down blogger credit: Jonathan Cummins
Jonathan Cummins is a historian of twentieth-century America with a specific interest in cities, the western United States, and working class culture. He is currently developing a book manuscript based on his PhD dissertation, entitled "The Biggest Little Trailer Park: Planning, Waste, and Trailer Housing in Sun Valley, Nevada, 1938-1976." Since completing a PhD in History at the University of Nevada, Reno, he has also worked as a city planner for a local government agency. He lives in Reno with his wife and two sons.