Peter Piersanti wasn't looking to build a town. He was just looking for a place to put his slot machines.
Piersanti was born in Superior, Wyoming, the youngest of six children of Italian immigrants, and the family eventually settled in Ogden, Utah. He was a practical man with a nose for opportunity. While in Ogden, he opened a bar and grill with a card room and pinball machines. Then came the war. Pete served in the U.S. Army, and after it was over he and his wife Faye relocated to Island Park, Idaho, where in 1947 they opened Island Park Lodge and introduced casino slot machines.
It was working. And then it wasn't.
In 1954, Idaho outlawed all forms of gambling. Most operators packed up and went home. Piersanti looked at a map. He packed everything up, moved south down Highway 93 just inside the Nevada line, and opened Cactus Pete's Motor Lodge — a gas station with slot machines, perched on a patch of desert that didn't even have a name yet.
What happened next is one of the stranger founding stories in Nevada history. Another Idaho businessman, Don French, followed Piersanti across the border and opened the Horseshu Club across the street. Two casinos, no town. The county commissioners first recognized the settlement in 1958 as "Horse Shu," with a population of 65, despite protests from Cactus Pete's over the name. The two clubs couldn't agree, so commissioners briefly renamed it "Unincorporated Town No. 1" before they all settled on "Jackpot" in 1959.
By then, the place was already outgrowing its origins. By 1958, Cactus Pete's was successful enough that fifteen hotel rooms were added and an aircraft runway was built nearby to accommodate visitors flying in from southern Idaho. The population went from 70 to over 400 in just a few years, most of them living in trailers because the banks still weren't convinced the town would last.
The banks were wrong.
Piersanti sold his interest in Cactus Pete's in 1971. He moved briefly to Las Vegas, then bought a casino in Carson City and renamed it Cactus Jack's — apparently unable to leave the business entirely, or maybe just unable to leave the name. He retired in 1989 and passed away on February 14, 1994, at 77. The Jackpot community honored him by naming Piersanti Drive after him.
Cactus Pete's is still there today, grown considerably from the gas station with slot machines it started as. The town Pete accidentally founded has a golf course now, a 4,000-seat amphitheater, and just under a thousand residents. He'd probably find that pretty funny.
