Rex Theater in Caliente torn down, hardware warehouse to be built in its place

What was left of the Rex Theater in Caliente has been torn down. Nathan Philips, the owner of True Value Hardware in Caliente, bought the theater property at a city auction. In an interview with the Record, Philips said it will be used to build a new warehouse for the hardware store. The business is currently running out of room every time a new shipment of goods is received. He noted the location is ideal for the hardware store because it is adjacent to his shop.

The Rex Theater has been closed since at least 2008, according to the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization dedicated to archiving websites.

Though the space has been vacant for many years, the Rex Theater stood in Caliente for over a century. While the Record could not determine when the theater was built, the first mention of the theater in the local newspaper was in June 1917.

Sara Denton, the nearly 100-year-old widow of the theater’s former operator, Ralph Lloyd Denton, said the theater was “the only entertainment in that little railroad town” in its prime. “Every night everyone would gather there,” she said.

Sara’s recollection of the theater is backed up by newspaper archives that detail locals holding honeymoon receptions, Labor Day celebrations and other holiday festivities at the theater.

Because of the theater’s cultural and historical significance to the town and the state, several people the Record interviewed, including Sara, mistakenly thought the theater was on the Nevada State Register of Historic Places. But the only place in Caliente that appears on that list is the Smith-Cornelius (Scott) Hotel.
Ralph Lloyd Denton was not only a theater operator who gave children a free movie and bag of popcorn on their birthday (according to his obituary, which the Record obtained from the Nevada Historical Society); he was also a long-standing member of Lincoln County school boards and local soil conservation boards. And he was a lifelong volunteer for organizations such as the March of Dimes, the Red Cross, local parent-teacher associations and the Work Progress Administration, a program that provided unemployed citizens with work and income opportunities.

Denton was the longest-serving theater operator in the United States when he died in the mid-1970s. His nephew, Ralph, ventured outside of his hometown of Caliente to become a prominent lawyer and politician in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Ralph, who died in 2012 at the age of 87, was a Clark County commissioner and Boulder City attorney, according to his obituary. He gained recognition in his law work for championing civil rights, was named a Distinguished Nevadan (with his wife) and earned the UNR President’s Medal for his service to the University of Nevada School of Medicine. He was also selected as one of the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s First 100.

Though the Rex Theater was significant to the history and culture of Nevada, True Value Hardware is also an essential service to Caliente by providing goods to the community that would otherwise not be readily available.