The Chicken Ranch is a licensed Nevada brothel in Pahrump, roughly an hour west of Las Vegas. The Nevada operation dates to 1976 and has an unusually well-documented history that includes two Nevada Supreme Court cases, a 1978 firebombing, complimentary flights from Las Vegas and a role in the legal brothel industry’s response to AIDS.
Today, the Chicken Ranch operates at 10511 S. Homestead Road under a Nye County brothel license held by Western Best, LLC. Nye County’s 2024 licensing records include a Sheriff’s Office background investigation identifying the licensed business as Western Best, LLC dba Chicken Ranch Brothel. The same report states that quarterly inspections had found the establishment in compliance with state and county regulations.
Where Is the Chicken Ranch?
The Chicken Ranch is located at 10511 S. Homestead Road in Pahrump, Nevada. Chicken Ranch and Sheri’s Ranch sit next to one another on Homestead Road, about 60 miles from the Las Vegas Strip. The ranch describes the drive from Las Vegas as approximately one hour on State Route 160.
There are no legal brothels in Las Vegas itself. Clark County cannot currently license brothels under Nevada’s population-based restriction, while neighboring Nye County permits them under local regulation. Brothel Nevada’s guide to the brothels near Las Vegas compares Chicken Ranch, Sheri’s Ranch and Alien Cathouse in more detail, while our Nevada brothel laws guide explains the state and county framework.
Is the Chicken Ranch Open 24 Hours?
The Chicken Ranch says it is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Visitors must be at least 21 years old and identification is checked at entry. Appointments are available, but walk-ins are accepted, and visitors can enter simply to have a drink at the bar without arranging a session with a courtesan.
How Much Does the Chicken Ranch Cost?
There is no standard Chicken Ranch price list for sexual services. The ranch says its courtesans are independent contractors who set their own prices. The amount depends on the individual courtesan, the time involved and the services being discussed, with an agreement reached privately before the party begins.
This is consistent with pricing throughout Nevada’s legal brothel industry. Reported transactions vary considerably, even among sex workers at the same house, which makes individual customer reports poor evidence of a general brothel rate. Brothel Nevada examined newspaper accounts, academic research and reported transactions in our separate guide to Nevada brothel prices.
What Happens When You Visit the Chicken Ranch?
The Chicken Ranch’s description of a first visit is fairly informal. A staff member greets customers after they enter, and visitors can have a drink, ask questions or request a lineup when they are ready. The ranch specifically says a lineup does not automatically begin as soon as someone walks through the door.
When a lineup is requested, available courtesans introduce themselves and the customer decides whom he or she would like to meet. Time, activities and price are then negotiated privately with the individual courtesan before an agreement is reached. Customers interested in seeing a particular person can also arrange an appointment rather than relying on who happens to be available when they arrive.
Leghorn Bar, Pool, Hot Tubs and VIP Bungalows
The Chicken Ranch has a full-service bar known as the Leghorn Bar and advertises a heated swimming pool, indoor and outdoor hot tubs, Jacuzzi bathtubs and VIP bungalows. Visitors can use the bar without purchasing sexual services.
Can You Stay Overnight at the Chicken Ranch?
An overnight stay can be arranged, but the Chicken Ranch does not operate a conventional hotel. Its FAQ specifically says ordinary hotel-room stays are not offered. An overnight is instead arranged with one of the courtesans as part of a party.
Transportation From Las Vegas
The Chicken Ranch currently offers complimentary transportation from Las Vegas. Its website says customers can arrange pickup from the Las Vegas area, including Harry Reid International Airport, and that the driver waits during the visit before providing transportation back.
Free transportation from Las Vegas has been part of the Chicken Ranch business model since its early years. Walter Plankinton initially offered limousine transportation and later replaced it with complimentary flights from McCarran International Airport to Pahrump. The air service became one of the more unusual chapters in the ranch’s early history.
Does the Chicken Ranch Offer Outcalls?
The Chicken Ranch says it does not offer Fly Me To You, or FMTY, services. Its current FAQ states that legal services offered through the ranch are conducted at the licensed brothel in Nye County and that anyone independently offering FMTY service is not affiliated with the Chicken Ranch.
Who Works at the Chicken Ranch?
The Chicken Ranch maintains a live roster of courtesans on its website, with listings showing current and appointment availability. Because individual schedules change, visitors traveling specifically to see one person should check the current roster or contact her before visiting.
For readers comparing the Chicken Ranch with the rest of the state’s operating industry, Brothel Nevada maintains a Nevada Brothel Directory and Nevada Brothel Map.
Chicken Ranch History
The Nevada Chicken Ranch Opens in 1976
The strongest near-contemporary evidence supports October 12, 1976 as the opening date of the Nevada Chicken Ranch. In its September-October 1981 issue, Nevada Magazine reported that the ranch was celebrating its fifth anniversary on October 12 and separately described Walter Plankinton as having initially opened the brothel within the Pahrump town limits in 1976.
Plankinton borrowed the Chicken Ranch name from the famous brothel in La Grange, Texas. The same Nevada Magazine profile, published while Plankinton was still operating the Pahrump ranch, described the name as borrowed from the Texas house. The more complicated history of that name is addressed later in this article.
By late 1977, Plankinton was fighting Nye County over whether the brothel could continue operating. The dispute eventually reached the Nevada Supreme Court.
Nye County v. Plankinton
On November 21, 1977, Nye County Administrator Pomeroy Neighbors filed a complaint alleging that the Chicken Ranch was a nuisance per se. County commissioners subsequently declared the brothel a nuisance and ordered it abated. Plankinton and co-owner Douglas Harkalis responded by seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in district court.
The district court sided with the Chicken Ranch, and Nye County appealed. On December 11, 1978, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the judgment. The court held that Nevada’s statutory licensing scheme for houses of prostitution had impliedly repealed the old common-law rule under which a brothel was automatically considered a nuisance per se.
The decision is sometimes described much more broadly as the case that legalized prostitution in Nevada. The Nevada Supreme Court clarified the point two years later in Kuban v. McGimsey, explaining that Plankinton had established that houses of prostitution were no longer nuisances per se but had not deprived counties of their authority to prohibit brothels entirely.
For the Chicken Ranch, the immediate result was that Nye County could not close the brothel simply by invoking the old rule that a house of prostitution was automatically a public nuisance.
The 1978 Chicken Ranch Firebombing
On June 10, 1978, according to testimony later summarized by the California Supreme Court in People v. Easley, a man ran into the Chicken Ranch and threw something inside, after which the building burst into flames. A February 1979 Washington Post account described the attack as a firebombing, reported that 14 people narrowly escaped and said the Chicken Ranch was back in operation four days later. At the time of that report, responsibility for the attack had not been officially determined.
Later court records contain considerably more evidence about the attack. In People v. Easley, the California Supreme Court summarized prosecution evidence involving Elbert Easley and Bill Martin, owner of a competing Nevada brothel. That evidence included a telegram and money order Martin sent Easley, evidence that Easley had stayed with Martin in Nevada around the time of the fire, and evidence indicating that Martin was involved in a conspiracy either to extort money from Plankinton or close the Chicken Ranch. A witness also testified that Easley later said he had burned the Chicken Ranch.
Those allegations should be kept separate from the criminal outcomes established by the federal record. James Tatum was charged with malicious destruction, conspiracy and making false declarations during the Chicken Ranch investigation. The destruction and conspiracy charges were dismissed at the close of the government’s case. Tatum was convicted of making false declarations to the grand jury.
Advertising Las Vegas: Princess Sea Industries v. State
Las Vegas was already an important market for southern Nevada brothels, and Plankinton actively pursued it through advertising and free transportation. His advertising eventually became part of another Nevada Supreme Court case.
In Princess Sea Industries v. State, decided in 1981, the court identified Princess Sea Industries as the owner and operator of the Chicken Ranch and described the brothel as approximately 65 miles from Las Vegas. The case challenged Nevada restrictions on brothel advertising in jurisdictions where prostitution was prohibited. The Nevada Supreme Court upheld the restrictions.
The opinion also provides useful contemporary evidence about the relationship between Las Vegas and the rural brothel industry. The court record reflected that a substantial amount of southern Nevada brothel business was derived from Clark County. It did not provide a Chicken Ranch-specific percentage, so the decision cannot tell us exactly how much of Plankinton’s business came from Las Vegas.
The Chicken Ranch Airfield and Free Flights From Las Vegas
Plankinton eventually went beyond newspaper advertising and limousine transportation. By 1981, Chicken Ranch customers could obtain free tickets in Las Vegas and board a Cessna 207 for the trip to Pahrump. Nevada Magazine reported that the service operated every three hours and that the flight from McCarran International Airport took about 25 minutes.
The physical airfield is independently documented by the federal government. In 1989, Western Best, Ltd. applied to the Bureau of Land Management for an airport lease covering 122.52 acres of public land in Nye County. The Federal Register notice states that two existing airstrips crossed public and private land, had been constructed more than eight years earlier by someone other than Western Best, and were to remain in their existing condition.
Together, the contemporary magazine account and the federal record establish both the complimentary air service and the physical existence of the airstrips without relying on later aviation histories for details such as runway dimensions.
Ken Green, Russell Reade and the 1982 Transition
The Chicken Ranch changed hands in early 1982. A January Associated Press report said Plankinton had completed plans to sell the ranch to Northern California businessman Kenneth Green and that Green had agreed to purchase it.
Russell Reade entered the picture immediately afterward. A San Francisco Chronicle archive item from February 19, 1982 reported that Reade, then a biology teacher at Analy High School in Sebastopol, was leaving education to become manager of the Chicken Ranch.
The contemporary sequence is more useful than later accounts that compress the transaction into a simple joint purchase. Green was identified as the buyer while the sale was being arranged, Reade entered as manager, and by April 1987 official Nevada legislative records identified Reade as both owner and manager of the Chicken Ranch.
Green and Reade were still appearing together in official Chicken Ranch licensing proceedings in December 2003, when Nye County minutes identified an attorney representing both men and recorded their participation in a discussion involving minority investment in the business.
Green’s connection continued well beyond that period. Nye County minutes from 2017 identified Western Best, LLC dba Chicken Ranch and stated that Kenneth Green was the owner. Current county licensing records continue to identify Western Best as the business holding the Chicken Ranch brothel license.
Russell Reade, AIDS and Nevada’s Condom Rules
Reade became one of the more visible brothel owners during the AIDS crisis. On April 23, 1987, the Nevada Assembly Judiciary Committee identified him as owner and manager of the Chicken Ranch and a representative of the Nevada Association of Brothels. Reade told lawmakers that he had made condom use mandatory for Chicken Ranch customers in 1985 and that the decision initially cost him a considerable amount of business.
A later medical study of Chicken Ranch records gave a slightly different date. Researchers examining records from March 1982 through the end of 1989 reported that mandatory condom use began in March 1986. They also reported that none of the sex workers whose records were examined tested positive for HIV during that period and that only one positive gonorrhea test occurred after the mandatory condom policy began.
The surviving evidence does not require choosing between 1985 and March 1986. Reade told Nevada lawmakers in 1987 that he had imposed the requirement in 1985; researchers later working from Chicken Ranch medical records dated the mandatory policy to March 1986.
When the Nevada State Board of Health adopted a statewide condom requirement in January 1988, UPI identified Reade as operator of the Chicken Ranch and president of the Nevada Brothel Association. Reade said the Chicken Ranch was already requiring condoms voluntarily and publicly supported the statewide rule.
Reade’s broader role in the industry’s political response to AIDS is covered separately in Brothel Nevada’s history of the Nevada Brothel Association.
TCR Holdings v. Nye County
The Chicken Ranch became connected to another brothel-licensing case during an attempted ownership change in the 2000s. Nye County’s June 2007 licensing agenda identified TCR Holdings, LLC dba Chicken Ranch, with Bruce Kahn as the applicant for a brothel license at the Homestead Road property.
Kahn and TCR Holdings later challenged Nye County’s requirement that a brothel-license applicant have been a Nevada resident for at least six months. In 2010, U.S. District Judge James Mahan entered judgment declaring the residency requirement a violation of the dormant Commerce Clause and permanently enjoining Nye County from enforcing it.
The proposed sale did not close. Contemporary reporting on the lawsuit said Kahn’s licensing application was denied before TCR’s purchase of the Chicken Ranch could be finalized. Current Nye County records continue to identify Western Best, LLC as the holder of the Chicken Ranch brothel license.
The Chicken Ranch Today
Nearly fifty years after the Nevada Chicken Ranch opened, Western Best, LLC continues to operate the licensed brothel at 10511 S. Homestead Road. In its most recent licensing material reviewed for this article, Nye County reported that quarterly inspections had found the establishment in compliance with state and county regulations and that the premises were suitable for brothel operation.
Is Nevada’s Chicken Ranch the Same Chicken Ranch From Texas?
The Nevada Chicken Ranch takes its name from the famous brothel outside La Grange, Texas, but the available evidence does not establish the two houses as one continuing business. A near-contemporary Nevada Magazine profile of Walter Plankinton described the Nevada name as borrowed from the Texas brothel. Brothel Nevada examines the business genealogy and the fate of the original Texas property in greater detail in our Nevada Brothel Genealogy.
What happened to the name after it reached Nevada is a separate part of the story. By 1991, the Pahrump Chicken Ranch was actively developing it as a commercial brand. UPI reported that the brothel had launched a marketing campaign built around a Chicken Ranch calendar, T-shirts, golf shirts and caps. Merchandise carried an egg-and-leg logo, and the campaign initially targeted the Las Vegas and Nevada souvenir market before planned national distribution. The same report said rights to the Chicken Ranch name had been acquired after the Texas operation closed.
Photo credits:
Chicken Ranch exterior (2007): BrianRedbeard at English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.
Chicken Ranch roadside sign (2008): Satori Son, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Chicken Ranch and Leghorn Bar expansion (2013): CRwebmaster, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Cessna 207 (1974): San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives, Wikimedia Commons, public domain/no known copyright restrictions.
Pahrump Valley and Nevada State Route 160 (2012): Tony Webster, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.