By CYNDI GRAHAM
Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Valley Chamber of Commerce, Moapa Valley Revitalization Project and the MV Rotary Club teamed up on a series of events that they called Moapa Valley Days last weekend.
The main event for the celebration was undoubtedly the Moapa Valley Community-wide Yard Sale. Despite a brief period of rainy weather on Friday, the Sale saw another banner year for its 14th year running. Nearly 30 different yard sales held by local residents throughout the community were strewn across the official Yard Sale map. This offered plenty of bargaining fun for yard sale shoppers.
The main event yard sale was led by the Moapa Valley Rotary Club in the Overton Lin’s Marketplace parking lot. This fundraiser sale saw lots of traffic. Shoppers were able rummage through furniture, clothing, decorations, electronics, glassware and other miscellaneous items. At some points in the weekend, folks could walk away with a bag full of treasures for a dollar.
Dark clouds above and occasional bursts of rain on Friday caused a few locations to scramble a bit to cover their belongings. But clear skies and warm weather on Saturday ensured the yard sale to go on with much success.
“Today has been absolutely gorgeous,” said Rotary Club President Dana Utgard on Saturday. “We are lucky we had such a great turnout of other people doing yard sales throughout the community”.
Rotarian Scott Adams, who has been volunteering with the yard sale for a few years, said that a lot of the big furniture sold on Friday. That was good so that the items got out of the rain in time, he said.
All leftover items at the Rotary yard sale were donated to the Senior Center Thrift Store at the end of the day. All proceeds from the Rotary Club sale go to scholarships for Moapa Valley High School graduates.
While all of this was going on, the MVRP, in coordination with the Lost City Museum, was holding an event all its own. It was a little trip through some of the history of the old west which took place right on the steps of the Museum.
The Southern Nevada Chapter of the Buffalo Soldiers were set up in full civil war era uniform. This historic reenactment group displayed props and replicas of artifacts from actual Buffalo Soldiers who were all black units formed to help in the settlement of the west following the Civil War.
In addition, there were performances from two of Moapa Valley’s best and brightest in cowboy poetry recitation. These included Kenny Marshall and Dave “Mahoney” Perkins who performed renditions of down-home verse for the crowd.
Around three dozen people filled the makeshift performance area that had been set up alongside the museum. The pueblo area behind the building where these events are usually held was waterlogged from recent rains and was unavailable.
“It was standing room only for these performances,” said MVRP member MaryKaye Washburn. “It went really well and there was a great turnout there.”
