KVIG Informative

Prospectors found a gypsum deposit on a hill southwest of Las Vegas in 1905. A century of mining followed, then two decades of federal litigation over what would replace it. Clark County’s own zoning records now say the answer is houses: In July 2024, the county approved redesignating roughly 2,010 acres of that same hill from open land to a major residential project, ending a fight that outlasted the mine itself.

The Blue Diamond Materials Company of Tehachapi, California, purchased the gypsum claim in 1923 and began intensive mining, according to a finding aid for the Blue Diamond Mine Corporation records held by UNLV Special Collections. By 1941, the company had built a processing mill at the foot of the hill and turned the small community of Cottonwood Springs into a company town it renamed Blue Diamondville, the finding aid states.

Ownership passed to the Flintkote Company in 1959 and then to James Hardie Gypsum, Incorporated, in 1987, according to UNLV Special Collections. The mine closed permanently in 2004. Developer Jim Rhodes purchased the mine and mill in 2005 and continued milling operations, the same finding aid states.

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A quarry becomes a lawsuit, then a bankruptcy

Rhodes’ company, Gypsum Resources LLC, sought to redevelop the hilltop site as a master-planned community — a fight that reached federal court. Gypsum Resources sued Clark County in 2019, alleging the county subjected its development applications to unending delays and conditions beyond those applied to comparable Las Vegas Valley projects, according to a Nevada federal bankruptcy court opinion in the case. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection two months after filing suit, the same opinion states.

That 2019 case traced back further still. The opinion describes a Stipulation and Settlement Agreement the parties signed around May 2020 to resolve an earlier federal case first filed in 2005 — and by the time of the newer lawsuit, each side accused the other of breaching that agreement, according to the court’s account.

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Clark County’s Zoning Commission approved a plan amendment for the property on July 3, 2024, redesignating roughly 2,010 acres from Open Lands and Residential Rural to Major Projects, according to the county’s own legislative record of that meeting. Gypsum Resources LLC is listed as the applicant on the amendment, along with a companion development ordinance for a mixed-use, master-planned community on the same acreage, the same record shows.

A century after prospectors first found gypsum on that hill, the fight over what replaces the quarry has outlasted the mine itself. The rock is gone. The county’s own zoning file now says the houses can come next.