...West Wendover and east Wendover now share a Junior and Senior High School on the Utah side and an elementary school in Nevada; the Tooele, Utah, and Elko, Nevada school districts paying each other tuition for the students. They also share local law enforcement, as police officers can make arrests on either side of the state line. In addition the fighting of fires is a shared concern. The Utah side provides support business like gas stations, lodging and grocery stores for the gambling resort businesses in Nevada. All proposals to date to legislate casino gambling on the Utah side have died quick deaths.

Water is the key to Wendover; the Nevada side especially has a limited supply. Wendover is also a supply center for ranchers, who range thousands of head of sheep and cattle within a fifty mile radius. Aside from the tourism, employment has been provided for over seventy-five years by the potash industry. In 1988 Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation sold its plant to Reilly Wendover, which produces 100,000 tons of fertilizer annually.

The city's elevation is 4,230 feet, and the mean monthly temperature of Wendover ranges from a maximum of 79 F. in July to a minimum of 27 F. in January, with an annual precipitation of approximately five inches. High summer temperatures and frequent wind create a large evaporation rate.

A number of religious denominations are represented in Wendover: Catholic, Baptist, Christian Fellowship, and a Mormon ward. An eighty-five foot concrete and steel sculpture "Metaphor --Tree of Utah--by Karl Momen welcomes Wasatch Front visitors approaching the city twenty-six miles away.

In 1971, after a public hearing, a design for a section of Interstate 80 was approved which, beginning at the state line and extending east, bypassed Wendover on the north. In 1990, under mayor "Ab" Smith, a ten-acre parcel of land was set aside as the town's first cemetery. The Bonneville Speedway Museum tells the story of the Salt Flats with historic cars; and Danger Cave, two miles northeast of town in the Silver Island Range, is a major archaeological site that once was home to various prehistoric desert cultures.

The community is served by the Salt Flat News, Wendover Relay and High Desert Advocate newspapers. Wendover was the site of the completion of the first transcontinental telephone line in 1914, and in 1942 an all-weather telephone cable was joined at Wendover.

Ouida N. Blanthorn