LOST VEGAS: Art Bell’s House and Radio Compound
Posted on: September 16, 2024, 03:44h.
Last updated on: September 17, 2024, 07:08h.
About an hour’s drive west of the Las Vegas Strip lies a mecca for true believers. The late Art Bell’s house and radio station still stand in remote Pahrump, Nev., monuments to the still-syndicated daily radio show, “Coast to Coast AM,” that Bell founded in 1988.
Bell didn’t necessarily believe all of his callers’ claims, but offered them an open forum to express them without fear of ridicule. That’s about as good as they ever got from the national media.
“The greatest question of all is whether our experience on this planet is it, or whether there is something else,” Bell, who was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2008, told Wired the following year. “Things in the supernatural realm give support, strangely perhaps, to the things we take on faith.”
The Art of Bell
Bell grew up a radio nut in a military family, becoming an FCC-licensed radio technician when he was just 13. When he served as a medic in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, he started an on-base pirate radio station that aired anti-war music.
Bell began his professional career more conventionally, as a late-night rock music DJ, until he grew tired of introducing records for a living. The first talk show he hosted was a political call-in show, “West Coast AM,” that emanated from inside downtown Las Vegas’ Plaza Hotel and was broadcast by KDWN-AM in 1978.
It was during this stint that Bell met and married his third wife, Ramona, a KDWN producer.
Bell told Wired that he grew “crushingly bored talking about politics 30 hours a week.” So, in 1988, he switched formats and studios. He talked mostly about his favorite topics — conspiracy theories, UFOs and the paranormal — and relocated his operation to the home he and Ramona shared in Pahrump.
Bell purchased the house next door and converted it into his own KNYE 95.1 FM. (Pahrump is located in Nye County or, as Bell liked to put it, “the Kingdom of Nye.”) Bell hosted, produced and engineered the show, while Ramona handled the business end.
At the peak of its popularity, “Coast to Coast AM” was America’s highest-rated late night radio talk show, syndicated to more than 500 stations and claiming 15 million listeners nightly.
The juxtaposition between the number of people Bell reached and the number who surrounded him physically was stark, and Bell preferred it that way. In 1988, the population of Pahrump, which covers more than 300 square miles, was only 5,000 people. Today, it has exploded by a factor of almost 10, and yet still feels like a very small town.
Bell Bottoms
In 2003, Bell semi-retired, making only occasional guest appearances on “Coast to Coast AM,” which was taken over by George Noory, through 2010. Bell later blamed his exit on undisclosed disagreements with the show’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks.
On Jan. 5, 2006, Ramona died of an apparent asthma attack while on vacation in Laughlin, Nev. Exactly three months later, Bell married his fourth wife, Airyn Ruiz Bell.
By 2013, Bell launched a new show on Sirius XM Radio called “Art Bell’s Dark Matter,” but it only lasted six weeks. Two years later, he hosted another new show, “Midnight in the Desert,” but resigned five months later due to concerns about his family’s safety. (Bell had reported several incidents of trespassers shooting firearms at and near his property.)
Bell died on Friday, the 13th of April, 2018 at his Pahrump home. Befittingly, though his cause of death was initially reported as a heart attack, that was not the truth.
His legions of listeners suspected just that, suggesting unsupported theories including everything from suicide to murder to a hoax.
The Nye County Coroner’s Office ruled it to be an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. Bell was 72.
“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.
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Last Comments ( 3 )
his shows were gold in the 90s (1994-1998). yet today, conspiracy theory is the common sense - and everyone thinks there is a hidden agenda or 'elite' or baby eater behind everything. what was once at the margins, and as such critical, has seeped into the everyday, and we are today epistemologically lost.
Thank you for a very informative article. One quibble I have though is its failure to mention the incredibly important role of Alan Canforth of Chancellor Broadcasting, who was instrumental in syndicating Art Bell’s radio show beginning in the early 1990s all they way from coast to coast. To state that “Bell hosted, produced, and engineered the show, while Ramona handled the business end,” and overlook the contribution of Mr. Canforth to Art’s success, is a regrettable omission. Art regarded Alan Canforth both as his “mentor” and good friend, and this should not go unmentioned. BUT AGAIN, thank you very much for writing this article. It’s important to remember the insightful contributions of Art Bell, along with his many guests and callers, to the wonderful world of the paranormal.
One of the greatest entertainers that Las Vegas and The Vegas Valley had. I miss his voice. RIP.