America's divorce city clings to past

Reno calls itself "The Biggest Little City in the World"

The one-time capital of domestic disharmony, Reno, is fighting to protect the monuments which testify to its legacy as America's divorce capital.

The Preserve Nevada group is campaigning to protect the Virginia Street Bridge, Reno's "bridge of sighs" which is threatened with removal in a flood-control plan.

Newly-divorced women are said to have flung their wedding rings from the bridge into the waters of the Trukee below, among them perhaps Reno divorcees such as Rita Hayworth.

The second historic sight is a vintage log motel - the Silver State Lodge.

Celebrities who untied the knot in Reno include actress Rita Hayworth

It is one of the last remaining "divorce ranches" where special deals were set up for would-be divorcees back in the 1930s.

At the time, Reno had uniquely liberal laws governing divorce and short-stay residency.

The divorces took place in the Washoe County Courthouse, Courtroom Number One.

Now a Historical Preservation Society is trying to restore the courtroom's number but needs $100,000.

Reno's courtroom, bridge and ranches were publicised in a long string of celebrity divorces including those of Jack Dempsey, Mrs Adlai Stevenson, Bobo Rockefeller, and Gloria Vanderbilt.

And its notoriety inspired hit movies such as The Women and Sir Arthur Miller's The Misfits.

Proud tradition

Now the city's most beloved divorce icon, the Virginia Street Bridge, built in 1905, could be destroyed as its low arches are believed to have contributed to a constricted flow of water in a 1997 flood.

The army corps of engineers has been working with a community coalition to investigate solutions, such as destroying the bridge and building a new one, but this is not popular.

Sir Arthur Miller wrote The Misfits while awaiting a divorce in Reno

Guy Rocha, a Nevada state archivist, said the existing bridge was "symbolic of a rite of passage."

An estimated 32,000 divorces took place from between 1929 and 1939 in Courtroom One and legend says it first became known as an "island in the sea of matrimony" in 1906.

William Corey, president of the United States Steel Corporation, went to Reno that year for a highly publicised divorce.

But by the 1960s, no-fault divorce laws and a more liberal attitude to ending a marriage forced Reno to lose its special crown in the world of matrimonial non-bliss.