Ruralite

Maps, You Say You Wanna Talk Maps? Then Read On

By Joe McCauley

Cassandra Radwich, co-owner of the Gotta Getta Map store in Pahrump, has always been “interested” in maps, and throughout her life she used maps a lot, in large part because she has also always liked to travel.

As a former high school German teacher, who has traveled to Germany five times, two of those trips with her high school students, Cassandra depended on maps to find her way around, and not just in Germany.

Cassandra’s numerous travels have taken her across much of the U.S. and Europe, the latter on a five-week trip in one instance, and to many other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Greece, and on a couple of cruises.

Everywhere she goes, Cassandra says she always makes it a point to carry maps, or she buys them on the spot.

“I always wanted to know where I was compared to what was around me,” Cassandra says. “I always bought maps, and I pored over them, and what went from an initial ‘interest’ in maps took a ‘natural progression’ to owning a map store.”

One day, Cassandra and a friend, Barbara Gutho, said to each other: “Hey, let’s start a map store.” And they did. Actually, the two partners started a pair of map stores.

Cassandra initially started her part of the joint venture at the Las Vegas Indoor Swap Meet at Decatur and Oakey, and her pitch to people as they walked by her booth was: “Would you like a free map of Nevada?” Naturally, most did, which broke the ice, and those people often became customers.

She still gives away free maps of Nevada in her Pahrump store, which is located at 361 S. Frontage Road, #2, in the Hollywood Plaza, east of Wal-Mart off State Route 160. After a year and a half at the swap meet, starting in 2001, she moved into her first bricks and mortar store in Henderson.

Her partner, Barbara, meanwhile, continues to operate her half of their map venture at 1566 Western Ave., at the Oakey Center, in Las Vegas. Gotta Getta Map is the name of both of the map stores, Las Vegas and Pahrump.

During the 1990s, after leaving Southern California, Cassandra worked in real estate sales (and held an active Nevada real estate sales license for five years), initially in Las Vegas. It was a realtor friend in Las Vegas who introduced her to Pahrump Valley.

On her first visit in 1992, Cassandra liked what she saw, and she and her husband, Bud, subsequently made regular visits to the valley. And later, when Cassandra saw Smith’s grocery store open up in Pahrump, she realized that the community was going to boom, and “that people would consider this place as an option to live.”

After a while, Cassandra and Bud began to think about moving to Pahrump, and last year they finally did. It was an easy decision for them, she says.

“Bud and I both saw the small-town atmosphere in Pahrump, and we both liked it. Bottom line,” she says, “we wanted to move to Pahrump.”

Then, last November, only a few months after Cassandra and Bud decided to move their personal residence to Pahrump, she opted to move her map store from Henderson to Pahrump, too. Cassandra says she could have easily gone back into the booming real estate business to make a living here, but instead decided to cast her lot on her first love—maps.

“I have all kinds of maps in stock. And if I don’t happen to have the one you want, because you can’t stock everything, I can get it within a few days,” Cassandra says.

But her onsite selection of maps is absolutely huge and varied: local, state, national and international, and wall maps, even some zip code maps. Her inventory includes local Pahrump and Las Vegas street maps, even astronomy maps, or “maps of stars” as Cassandra likes to call them—she has all of these types of maps, and more, in stock.

In fact, Cassandra likes to advertise both her and her partner’s map stores as: “Your one-stop source for any type of maps, globes or accessories.”

Since opening her store in Pahrump, Cassandra says she has been encouraged to learn that there are many other map lovers in the area.

“There are a lot of map aficionados out here, in Pahrump, and it’s amazing at how a lot of people just really like maps.”

In the relatively short amount of time her store has been open in Pahrump, Cassandra has already cultivated a wide-ranging clientele, which is growing daily. They include hunters, hikers, off-road enthusiasts, rock hounds, and tourists, both foreign and American, early retiring Baby Boomers, still hale and healthy who are looking for places in the desert, and state, to explore, and even a gold miner here and there. For most people, their purpose is practical—they simply need a map or two, or three, many times even more maps than that, to find and explore all of the places they are interested in.

“Hunters buy a lot of maps,” says Cassandra. “Our store in Las Vegas does a bang up (no pun intended) job selling maps to hunters. In Pahrump, many hunters, because the store is still new, don’t quite know that I’m here yet, but when they do come in they, too, often leave with $25 to $50 worth of maps.

“As people find me, I know they’re spreading the word (about my store), because it is so new, unique, and different,” Cassandra says.

Hunters especially, says Cassandra, like the “topo,” which is the shortened form of the word “topographical,” also called the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) maps. These maps show details—such as the contour, elevation and other physical land features—along with the roads, sometimes buildings, and so forth. Many hunters also hunt all over the state, says Cassandra, and often want a bunch of maps to take with them to each area of the state they hunt in.

“In addition to hunters, local old-timers and many others in the area also like maps. That’s because they like to see where they’ve been, and probably where they’ll go back to,” Cassandra says. “And a lot of them will say to me, ‘We’re glad you’re here.’ ”

But Cassandra says selling maps isn’t as simple and easy as it may seem, because, like so many things, the seller must have a working knowledge of a lot of information, for a lot of different types of customers. First and foremost, though, Cassandra says she has to know the general, and sometimes the specific history, too, as well as the basic geography, of Pahrump and Nevada.

“I have to be aware of many specific things,” says Cassandra. “And I have to remember what people tell me about the places they’ve been to, the road conditions and landmarks. I have to know about the availability of water, food, and gas, so that I can tell others who come into the store who are planning to go to the same areas.”

Often, for those people unsure about where their treks might take them, Cassandra may suggest places for them to visit, Bonnie Springs, or Scotty’s Castle, for example. Cassandra says people ask her all kinds of questions about the area.

Sometimes people even ask her about the Pahrump real estate market, which was her introduction to the valley: “At least I have answers for them,” she says.

“I feel that a lot of people move to Pahrump because they like to poke around in the desert, and I have the maps for them to poke around in the desert with,” she says.

“There’s a lot going on here in Pahrump. Many older people are still very active. They want to do things, and they have the income to afford to do them. Since it costs less to live here, they can use the money they save from living here for other things.”

As a result, “I’m my own little Nevada tourism commission,” she says. In fact, she does serve on the state’s Pioneer Territory board, and also goes to many statewide and local tourism special events, where she sets up her booth and sells maps. She is a member of both the Beatty and Pahrump Valley chambers of commerce.

“When people ask me where they can find gold, I tell them: ‘Usually, where it’s been found before.’ ”

She can then supply them with the appropriate maps to old gold diggings, usually the geologically oriented technical maps that UNR produces. In fact, Cassandra claims that one customer even found some flecks of gold that way. And for those who want to find either copper or turquoise, Cassandra says they can usually be found close to each other.

“Many people want to know where to find gold,” Cassandra says. “Nevada is number three in the world for gold production, and there are a number of working gold mines in the state. Many washes have gold,” she says. “It may be infinitesimal in size, but it’s there.”

For hikers, Cassandra tries to remember the names of the trails they mention, along with the names of the mountain ranges in both Nevada and nearby California. And she has to know the laws in each state. The rules for driving off road in the California and Nevada are different. Most of Nevada, for example, is BLM land, so it is less restrictive for off-road enthusiasts, whereas California contains more national preserves, or parks, and is much more restrictive for off-roaders.

“Just from one side of Pahrump Valley to the other, east to west, for example, you can’t drive off-road in the Nopah Range west of Pahrump, but you can in the Spring Mountain Range east of Pahrump, ” she says.

Gotta Getta Map also carries those things that go with maps, for example, such things as walking sticks, compasses, the raised relief or “bumpy” maps, and magnifiers that make it easier to read maps, along with a broad selection of books: history, nature, gem books, and magazines.

Cassandra carries Stanley Paher’s best-selling “Nevada Ghost Towns & Mining Camps,” and other Paher books, all of which are autographed by the author. She also has many books on off-roading, wildflowers, and rock hounding. She even stocks a couple of books with the curious titles, “Scats and Tracks of the Desert Southwest,” and “Gold from Water (and other mining scams),” along with having on hand many of the popular Bill Mann books, which are illustrated and informative guides to “interesting and mysterious places” in the Mojave Desert, mainly in California.

If she doesn’t by this time—the start of the Christmas shopping season—Cassandra plans to soon stock the popular global positioning system (GPS) devices that “geocache” enthusiasts use to find hidden “treasures” or “caches.”

Many customers also like the old-time, or so-called “antique” maps she sells, many of which are beautifully matted and framed. Cassandra carries both the authentic antique, and the reproduction antique versions. Like the maps, she can also order map gadgets, and for one man, she was able to obtain a rare type of surveyor’s ruler.

“I realized that I had to carry more than maps to survive financially,” says Cassandra. “Maps and map-related items make great gifts, especially for people who like the outdoors, and for those people who are really hard to buy for.

“I have globes, and for the man or woman who has everything, I even have a colorful Geochron World Time Clock. It shows the time for anywhere in the world, along with where it is light and dark at any given time. But they sell for a lot more than most items I have, from $1,595 to $2,895.”

The telephone number for the Las Vegas “Gotta Getta Map” store that Barbara Gutho operates at 1566 Western Avenue at the Oakey Center is 702-678-6277 (678-MAPS). The phone number for the Pahrump store that Cassandra operates is 727-3773. The e-mail address for both stores is Gottagettamap@hotmail.com. Their Web site address is http://gottagettamap.com.