Editing Searchlight, Nevada (section)

==History==
[[File:Nevada - Searchlight - NARA - 23942395 (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|Searchlight in 1923]]

According to [[United States Senate|U.S. Senator]] [[Harry Reid]] (1939–2021), who wrote extensively about his hometown, the most likely story as to how the town received its name was that when George Frederick Colton was looking for [[gold]] in the area on May 6, 1897, he supposedly said that it would take a [[searchlight]] to find gold ore there.{{Citation needed|date=October 2010}} Shortly thereafter, he found gold, leading to a boom era when Searchlight had a larger population than Las Vegas. At the time, it was in [[Lincoln County, Nevada]]. As talk surfaced for carving [[Clark County, Nevada]] out of Lincoln County, Searchlight was initially considered to be the county seat.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Bartlett Pesek |first=Margo |date=April 29, 2012 |title=Former boomtown Searchlight rich with history |work=[[Las Vegas Review-Journal]] |url=https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/trip-of-the-week/former-boomtown-searchlight-rich-with-history/}}</ref> Between 1907 and 1910, the gold mines produced $7 million in gold and other precious minerals, and the town had a population of about 1,500. The ore was shipped to [[Barnwell, California|Barnwell]] via the [[Barnwell and Searchlight Railway]].

Other stories on the origin of the name include a story that Colton was lighting a Searchlight brand [[match]] when he discovered the gold ore. Reid dismissed this story, saying that the Searchlight matches were not available in 1898. Yet another story says that Colton thought the area would be a good place because it was on a hill. His mine was called the [[Duplex (building)|Duplex]], because the gold ore was found on two levels.<ref>[http://www.1st100.com/part1/colton.html "Harry Colton"], ''1st100''<br>- {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P0_MfeTTpVUC&dq=Searchlight+matches&pg=PA17 |title=Searchlight: The Camp That Didn't Fail|author=Harry Rei|publisher=University of Nevada Press |date=January 1998|isbn=0-87417-310-8 |via=Google Books}}</ref>

Searchlight declined after 1917 but remained as a stop on the [[Arrowhead Trail (auto trail)|Arrowhead Highway]]. In 1927, [[U.S. Route 91]] bypassed the town and its population dropped to 50.

The town had a resurgence in the 1930s and 1940s with the construction of the nearby [[Hoover Dam]] and was the site of the El Rey Bordello in the 1940s and early 1950s until the bordello burned down. The last gold mine ceased operating around 1953.{{citation needed|date=October 2022}}