Countdown begins: Lake Mohave’s trailer owners face deadline to get out
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — It’s a decision that’s been brewing for more than 50 years — and will take 20 years to become final. Now that it has arrived, the details are very important to the people who are caught in the middle.
Important enough for 200 people to show up on a Saturday morning when they could have been out on the water — the whole reason they come to scenic Cottonwood Cove in the first place.
The National Park Service (NPS) started the gears turning in January at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, approving a new lease that sealed the fate of a small trailer park on the shores of Lake Mohave in the scenic Cottonwood Cove area, about an hour south of Las Vegas. There’s been talk about removing the trailers since 1971.
About 200 trailers that have been there “forever” will be phased out by 2043 under terms of a new agreement between NPS and concessionaire Lake Mead Mohave Adventures, which runs most of the commercial operations within the recreation area.
Why is it changing?
“Trailer Village” is a throwback. It’s not the way NPS wants to run things in the 21st century — and Lake Mead is the last unit in the NPS system to pull the plug on a decades-old vision for using public lands. Trailers at Willow Beach are gone, and Katherine Landing Trailer Village is already being phased out.
At Cottonwood Cove, trailer owners are allowed to use their vacation homes a total of 180 days through the year. The trailers and the boats parked alongside them have become a way of life for families that travel hundreds of miles to the site, a quiet spot that’s filled with memories for people who have been coming for decades. They understand what’s going to happen, but that doesn’t mean they like it.
Trailer owner Jim Stahovich thinks the answer is simple. The trailers are allowed to stay until 2043, so why not let things operate as is until then? Let the Trailer Village “sunset” peacefully. But it appears to be past that point now. Instead, Lake Mead Mohave Adventures is adding a whole lot of unpopular rules to the equation.
The biggest: a change in longstanding rules that will now require owners to stop parking their boats next to their trailers. They will have to park them in a dry storage area that Lake Mead Mohave Adventures is in the process of building.
Strong opinions
Why the change? NPS officials call the practice a fire hazard because of the fuel in the boats. That line of thinking rankled a lot of people including Owen Evans.
“We haven’t had that problem in the 50 years that I’ve been here,” Evans said. “But they’re creating a whole ‘nother hazard of having another 100 boats on the road being towed back and forth here to Cottonwood Cove.” He said the fire hazard worry doesn’t “pencil out.”
The area is 14 miles straight east from Searchlight, Nevada.
“We’ve been coming out here since 1965 enjoying the trailer village. And it’s been here ever since then,” said Evans, who lives in Redondo Beach, California. Now he’s on the clock, instead of thinking about how his grandchildren would be able to use the trailer for years to come.
A man who has a trailer at Katherine Landing criticized that approach. “Without those trailer villages there, nobody’s going to go out there and park their $100,000 boats,” Curt Bunce said. He is also locked into the battle to find some way to protect trailer owners from what’s happening.
When word got out that Cottonwood Cove was phasing out the park, a firestorm of opinions followed on social media — many of them from people at Katherine Landing, where a year earlier, the same process started with a lease addendum that arrived quietly in the mail.
This time, people were out in force when the opportunity to ask questions came.
Points of contention
They questioned recent rent increases, appraisal costs and insurance costs for the new dry storage area. They looked suspiciously on the motives behind the new rules.
Now some people are getting out. Dale Pederson, who owns at Cottonwood Cove, said before all this came up, there were two trailers on the market. Now, 17 people are selling, he said.
Pederson said the owners need to know the plan in detail, because it will be the reason they decide whether to stay or to go.
Bunce and others believe the trailers themselves are being overlooked. He said they are looking into hiring a lobbyist to escalate the fight.
Long traditions
For some, it’s possibly the end of a long family tradition.
“It brings me to tears just writing this. All that Lake Mohave means to me/us,” Jeni Rosenthal wrote in an email to 8 News Now. Her family has been coming to Katherine Landing since before she was born. Her mother’s ashes were scattered at a mountain nearby.
“To most of us it is our second home with a lifetime of love and memories. It means something to us, it means more than they can understand and we will do whatever we need to do to ensure it doesn’t go anywhere so our children can continue to enjoy it like we did and hopefully our children’s children can make the same memories there,” she wrote.
Lake Mead Mohave Adventures announced the new 25-year lease at Cottonwood Cove in January. They unveiled a plan to spend $10 million on upgrades to the area. The company worked with NPS officials to extend the deadline for owners to sell their trailers if they want out. They now have until Dec. 31, 2028.
Any sales must inform the buyers of the future of Trailer Village. When 2043 arrives, the remaining trailers will be used as short-term rentals.
Jim Gartner, who leads the Trailer Village HOA, says 2043 is a way off — and who knows how the plan might change. He said he knew the future of the village when he bought his trailer.
“I personally am going to enjoy the place the next 19 years. I’ve loved it since 1998. I plan on maintaining my trailer the way I always have. I’m hopeful that maybe there’ll be some relaxation on parking the boat next to the trailer. I think that needs some further study,” Gartner said.
“We love our neighbors here. We’re visitors. We don’t own the land,” he said.
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