Jeanway 0 Posted September 28, 2004 Is Battle Mountain Truly the Armpit of America? Here's Gene Weingarten's article from the Washington Post Magazine. The Armpit of America? On December 2, 2001, the Washington Post Sunday Magazine included an article titled "Why Not the Worst?". In it, author Gene Weingarten described his assignment to select the most abject community in the land to be "The Armpit of America". He described his visits to Battle Mountain and his decision to choose our town as the national armpit. I read with interest Mr. Weingarten's article in the Sunday Washington Post on Battle Mountain. My wife and I are thinking of relocating from Central California to Winnemucca solely to be closer to people like you. Your attitude in what could have been an otherwise "uncomfortable" situation has given us hope, comfort and happiness. To read all the comments we've received since our Armpit award, and to add your own, visit our Bulletin Board. The news hit us out of the blue. Some of us got mad and stayed mad. Some of us got mad and then got over it. Gradually most of us have come to accept this blow to our pride as the "knock of opportunity" — there were Armpit T-Shirts for sale at Mills' Drug within two weeks of the article's publication, and our first Festival in the Pit will take place June 29 - July 4. We hope you'll join us as we have some fun making lemonade from this lemon. The Story Behind the BM (A Quote from an interview with Elenor Lemaire who was one of four teachers in Battle Mountain at that time. She still resides in Battle Mt., She will be 101 this year.) At this time they also put the B.M. on the mountain. "A long happy story. It was 1926 and we were sitting on the steps at the high school. I suggested putting a letter on the hill. We asked Prof Saxe to help. (He was the carpentry teacher). We laid the two letters out using a chalk line and the whole school turned out to pull brush and move rocks. We carried whitewash up and painted the B.M. The letters measure 100' by 75'. Later we received a letter from the Aviation Department in Washington, D.C. thanking us for putting the letters there. It was halfway between Mountain Home and Tonopah and the best landmark around as it could be viewed from miles around and was very distinctive. The pilots flew by line of sight then." Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
WEAREBORG4102 0 Posted October 8, 2004 It does look sort of like an armpit..... :biggrin: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
