Reno, Divorce Capital of the World: The Six-Week Residency Era

For more than sixty years, a woman could step off the train in Reno, take a room, wait out a short residency, and walk down the steps of the Washoe County Courthouse unmarried. The city called it the cure. The rest of the country called Reno the Divorce Capital of the World, and the nickname held from 1906 until the 1970s, through two wars, Prohibition, and the Depression.

The trade rested on one number. In 1931 Nevada cut its residency requirement to six weeks, the shortest in the nation, and a whole economy grew up around those forty-two days: hotels with kitchenette suites, dude ranches on the edge of the sagebrush, boarding houses on every side street, and a bridge over the Truckee River where, the story goes, wedding rings went into the water. The buildings, the habits, and the paper they left behind are still part of how Reno looks and how it sees itself.

The Law and the Six Weeks

Nevada's divorce law was a frontier inheritance. The territory set a residency requirement of six months in 1861, and the state kept it at statehood in 1864, a shorter stay than most of the country asked. The grounds were generous too. Nevada recognized seven, among them desertion, extreme cruelty, and neglect, at a time when New York allowed divorce for adultery alone and required it to be proved in open court.

Reformers pushed back, and the numbers followed. In 1913 the legislature lengthened the residency requirement to a full year, and the divorce trade slumped. In 1915, with the lawyers and landlords of Reno making their case, lawmakers restored six months. The lesson was not lost on the state: the waiting period was a price, and Nevada could set it.

It set it lower twice. In 1927 the legislature cut residency to three months and added two years of insanity as a ground, answering competition from Idaho and Arkansas and from the divorce mills of France and Mexico. In 1931, with the Depression deepening, it went further and cut the requirement to six weeks, an unheard-of figure, in the same session that legalized wide-open gambling. Nevada's requirement is still six weeks today.

The rules of those weeks were plain. A petitioner lived in Nevada continuously, kept a fixed address, and named a resident witness, a landlady or ranch owner or friendly local, who would swear in court that the stay was genuine. The hearing took place at the Washoe County Courthouse, the 1911 building by Frederic DeLongchamps, where more than thirty thousand divorces were granted in the 1930s alone; we take up that building in our story of the Washoe County Courthouse. In 1942 the United States Supreme Court ruled that other states had to honor a Nevada decree, and the cure was complete.

The Divorce Colony and the Ranches

The people who came to wait were known as the divorce colony: mostly wives, mostly well off, drawn from New York, Chicago, and Hollywood, living in Reno for the length of the residency and leaving the day the decree was signed. The colony arrived in force in 1906, when Laura Corey, wife of the president of U.S. Steel, won her divorce on grounds of desertion, custody of her son, and a settlement of $3 million. Newspapers across the country covered it, and Reno had its reputation. In 1920 Mary Pickford ended her marriage to Owen Moore after a stay in Minden, with the lawyer Patrick McCarran at her side, and married Douglas Fairbanks about a month later.

The town built for its guests. Apartment houses such as the Colonial, with forty-eight furnished units, opened in 1907, and Victorian homes became rooming houses that took in divorcees for decades. In the 1930s Reno had about eighteen thousand residents and granted roughly thirty thousand divorces. The colony was not an incident in the city's life. It was the business.

For those who wanted privacy, there were the divorce ranches. The TH Ranch at Pyramid Lake, opened in the 1920s, was the first of Nevada's dude ranches, and more than twenty-five followed on the edges of Reno. The most celebrated was the Flying M E at Franktown in Washoe Valley, about twenty miles south of the city, which grew out of an 1860s stage-stop hotel. Dore and Emily “Emmy” Pentz Wood turned it into a guest ranch, and Emmy ran it on her own after their 1946 divorce, into the early 1960s. Eleanor Roosevelt stayed there in 1943 for a rest and wrote about it in her newspaper column. The ranch burned in 1963.

Days at the Flying M E belonged to the wranglers: trail rides into the Sierra, overnight trips to Virginia City, outings to Pyramid Lake and Tahoe. Evenings belonged to the ranch wagon, which carried guests to the bars and card rooms of Carson City. The staff kept celebrity names out of the papers, and the guests, men and women alike, were called “dudes.” Nearby were Pyramid Lake Ranch, Washoe Pines, and Donner Trail Ranch at Verdi. Arthur Miller waited out his six weeks in 1956, and The Misfits, the 1961 film he wrote, opens with a Reno divorce.

The Hotels and the Social Scene

In town, the address was the Riverside Hotel. George Wingfield built the six-story brick building on the south bank of the Truckee in 1927, the same year the residency requirement fell to three months, and the Nevada architect Frederic DeLongchamps gave it forty corner suites with kitchens, rooms meant for long stays. Clare Boothe took one in 1929 to end her first marriage; her play The Women, which carries its characters to Reno, followed in 1936. The El Cortez, an Art Deco hotel of 1931, was built by an investor who saw the six-week law coming. Later the Mapes opened in 1947, and the story of that tower is in our look at the Mapes Hotel. Thomas' Café, nicknamed the Delmonico's of Reno, fed the colony.

The social calendar was cocktails, dinners, dancing, and the card rooms, and after Prohibition ended in 1933 the clubs multiplied. Pearl Buck came in 1935; the list of arrivals in the 1930s and 1940s runs through novelists, heiresses, and film stars. The shorthand for the experience entered the language: the cure, and to be “Reno-vated.” “I'm going to Reno” needed no explanation anywhere in the country.

Reno profited on every side of the transaction. Lawyers, landladies, hoteliers, restaurateurs, jewelers, and dude wranglers all lived off the six weeks, and the legislature treated the residency law as economic policy, trimming it each time another state or country tried to take the trade. The same town sold marriages as well. When California imposed a three-day waiting period in 1927, couples crossed the Sierra for quick weddings, and in time the courthouse issued more marriage licenses than divorce decrees. Park Wedding Chapel, Reno's first freestanding wedding chapel, opened across from the courthouse in 1956.

The Ring and the Bridge

Every divorce capital needs a ritual, and Reno's was a short walk from the courthouse. The Virginia Street Bridge, a concrete double arch completed in 1905 and designed by the San Francisco architect John B. Leonard, carried the main street across the Truckee River, and a bridge has stood at the crossing since 1860. The tradition says that a newly divorced woman walked to the middle of the span and dropped her wedding ring into the water. Reno called it the Wedding Ring Bridge and the Bridge of Sighs, and the story outlived the trade.

The 1905 bridge was replaced by a new span in 2016. The Truckee still runs beneath it, and the ring story is still the first thing most people ask about when Reno's divorce years come up.

The End of the Era

The first rival was Las Vegas. Its divorce business grew through the 1950s, and in the year from July 1962 to June 1963 Las Vegas granted more divorces than Reno for the first time. California residents, the trade's best customers, found the shorter drive to Las Vegas more convenient, and Reno never took the lead back.

The second blow was the law itself. In 1967 Nevada added incompatibility as a ground and shortened the separation period. In 1969 California passed the first modern no-fault law, replacing fault grounds with “irreconcilable differences,” effective January 1, 1970. Other states followed, and by the 1970s no-fault divorce was the national norm. A traveler no longer needed Nevada, and the migratory trade ended. In 1971 the Nevada Assembly voted to cut the residency requirement to three weeks, but the bill died in the Senate; there was nothing left to compete for.

The buildings went the way of the trade. The Flying M E burned in 1963. The Riverside lost its gaming license in 1967 and closed in 1968, and finally shut in 1987. What Reno kept was the name: the Biggest Little City, a divorce capital for sixty-odd years, and a crowd of hotels, courthouses, and bridges that outlived the reason they were built.

At a Glance: Reno, Divorce Capital of the World

• Nevada set a six-month residency requirement for divorce in 1861 and kept it at statehood in 1864.
• The requirement went to one year in 1913, back to six months in 1915, to three months in 1927, and to six weeks in 1931, the same year gambling was legalized.
• Laura Corey's 1906 divorce from the president of U.S. Steel made Reno's name; Mary Pickford, Clare Boothe, Pearl Buck, and Arthur Miller followed.
• The Washoe County Courthouse granted more than thirty thousand divorces in the 1930s, in a city of about eighteen thousand people.
• The divorce colony lived in hotels such as the Riverside (1927), in rooming houses, and on dude ranches such as the Flying M E in Washoe Valley.
• The tradition of tossing wedding rings from the Virginia Street Bridge gave it the nickname Bridge of Sighs.
• Las Vegas passed Reno in divorces in 1962–63, and no-fault divorce, which began in California in 1970, ended the migratory trade.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Nevada cut its divorce residency requirement to six weeks?

In 1931. The legislature had reduced it from six months to three months in 1927, and the six-week law passed in the same 1931 session that legalized gambling. Nevada's requirement remains six weeks today.

Why was Reno called the Divorce Capital of the World?

Because for more than sixty years its short residency requirement, generous grounds, and ready supply of hotels, rooming houses, and ranches drew people from across the country who wanted a quick divorce. The 1906 Corey case put the city on the national map, and the 1931 six-week law made it the first choice.

What was a divorce ranch?

A dude ranch where people waiting out the residency requirement could stay in privacy, ride, and socialize. The Flying M E in Washoe Valley, the TH Ranch and Pyramid Lake Ranch at Pyramid Lake, Washoe Pines, and Donner Trail Ranch at Verdi were among the best known.

Why did Reno stop being the divorce capital?

Las Vegas overtook Reno in the early 1960s, and then no-fault divorce, which began in California in 1970 and spread across the country, meant that no one had to travel to Nevada for a divorce at all.

Conclusion

Reno's divorce years rested on a simple trade: Nevada offered a short wait, and the country paid for it. A single number, six weeks, produced a skyline of hotels, a ring of dude ranches, and a reputation that two generations of Americans could repeat from memory. The law that made it possible was changed by other states, and the trade ended within a decade.

What survives are the objects: the keys, postcards, and cocktail glasses that a traveler carried home. To bring a piece of that era home, explore our curated collection at The Eclection.

Resources & Further Reading

For deeper study, these are reliable, non-commercial starting points:

• Online Nevada Encyclopedia — articles on Nevada history, including Reno's twentieth-century divorce trade.
• Nevada Historical Society — the state museum and research library for Nevada history.
• Reno Historical — a local history project with tours and entries on the courthouse, hotels, and rooming houses of the divorce era.
• Reno Divorce History — a timeline and thematic history of the migratory divorce trade, including the residency law and the guest ranches.

Hero photograph: the Virginia Street Bridge over the Truckee River, Reno, Nevada. Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress. Public domain.