Shuttered Whiskey Pete’s Near Vegas Reopens for Ghost Tours

Posted on: October 8, 2025, 12:09h. 

Last updated on: October 8, 2025, 02:12h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Vegas Myths Busted.
  • Primm, which was once a thriving Cal-Nev border town, is today nothing more than a ghost town on I-15
  • The owner of the now-defunct Whiskey Pete’s casino is leaning into the theme for Halloween, offering tourists a chance to explore the empty property
  • Check it out at your — and your wallet’s — own risk starting on October 10

When the once-thriving resort town where you acquired three bankrupt casinos becomes a ghost town, you might as well lean into the theme. Using this thinking, Affinity Interactive’s Primm Valley Resorts is set to reopen the recently shuttered Whiskey Pete’s casino for guided ghost tours on October 10, just ahead of Halloween.

This drawing of Whiskey Pete’s illustrates the website offering its ghost tours. (Image: fareharbor.com)

According to the attraction’s website, touring the guts of the vacant casino won’t be cheap ($175 per person), but will give guests “the chance to explore its dark corridors after hours with professional ghost-hunting equipment and guidance from Vegas Afterlife investigators.”

That equipment includes EMF meters, thermal imaging cameras, and “spirit boxes.” (For the uninitiated, these are radio receivers that randomly sweep through frequencies in a manner that paranormal investigators believe gives spirits the opportunity to manipulate the noise into their own words in real time.)

While speculation about whether Whiskey Pete, or any of his equally dead friends, actually haunt the former site of his filling station is more a matter of faith, true believers consider the property’s paranormal claims already legitimized by the paranormal reality series “Ghost Adventures,” which filmed an episode there earlier this year.

The ghost tours also capitalize on pretty much the only exciting thing to come out of Primm in the past five years — unauthorized YouTube explorations of its creepy ruins.

Primm Reaper

Primm was once a popular stopover for gamblers along Nevada’s border with California — a cheaper and grittier alternative to Las Vegas that also had the advantage of being about 50 miles closer for Southern Californians driving there in traffic.

Whiskey Pete’s, which had 777 hotel rooms, 31 table games, and 1,360 slots, is shown in better days. (Image: trackame.com)

Motorists could pull off the freeway to ride the towering Desperado roller coaster at Buffalo Bill’s, check out the infamous Bonnie and Clyde “death car” at Whiskey Pete’s, and hunt for bargains at the adjacent outlet mall.

About 25 years ago, Primm’s business began to decline in tandem with a wave of new tribal casinos that opened across California. These casinos were easier to reach for many SoCal gamblers and offered nicer accommodations.

This creepy memorial to Whiskey Pete McIntyre and his moonshine distillery decorates the lobby of Whiskey Pete’s casino. (Image: bp.blogspot.com)

That steady decline was rapidly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whiskey Pete’s closed last December, followed in July by Buffalo Bill’s (which now only opens for concerts and special events), leaving only Primm Valley Resort & Casino open full-time.

Who Was Whiskey Pete?

Whiskey Pete was the nickname of Peter McIntyre, an outlaw bootlegger who ran a Standard Oil (Chevron) station on the site of today’s casino in the 1920s and early 1930s.

While Whiskey Pete smiled at visitors from animated signs around his namesake property, the real person was a violent a-hole.

According to a 1928 report in the Las Vegas Review newspaper, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce received several complaints from tourists about his violently anti-social behavior. According to one, he shot at them as they exited his gas station.

Well, at least they got the jug of moonshine correct. (Image: Whiskey Pete’s)

An article about McIntyre in the March 28, 1931, edition of the Las Vegas Age newspaper noted that “Pete resents the bad name given to him by a portion of the public and the press, alleging that he is not so bad as he is painted.” (The occasion of the article was McIntyre’s release on bail after shooting Rube Bradshaw, a local postmaster, in the shoulder.)

Looming large in Whiskey Pete’s legend is the manner in which he was buried. Supposedly, it was with his cherished 10-gallon hat on his head, six-shooters strapped to his side, and a bottle of his own moonshine whiskey. His coffin was also said to be buried upright, facing what was then called the Arrowhead Trails Highway, to honor McIntytre’s request to “see all those sons of bitches going by.”

Not a word of that is true, by the way, and we know because we tracked down and interviewed the construction supervisor who mistakenly disturbed his coffin, then reburied it in the same exact spot, 31 years ago.