Survival training in the Nevada desert

From the Reno city limits to the California border 20 miles northwest of the “Biggest Little City in the World,” sagebrush, Peavine Mountain and a few dozen homes or ranches dotted the landscape more than 75 years ago along U.S. Highway 395. Visitors called Reno a quaint little city, known mostly for both its reputation as a “Divorce Capital of the World” and its gambling establishments along Virginia Street, yet for the thousands of residents who called Washoe County home, another enterprise sprung up in the Nevada desert to aid the war effort.