The brothel started out as a set of four double-wide trailers, run by Richard Bennett and initially called
Mustang Bridge Ranch. Joe Conforte (1925-2019), (
Look gave his age as 48 in 1971) who had owned several brothels in Nevada together with his wife, Sally Burgess Conforte aka Jesse E. Conforte (1917–1992) since October 1955, took over the Mustang Bridge Ranch in 1967. At this time, brothels were not explicitly illegal in Nevada, but some had been closed as public nuisances. Conforte gained political influence in Storey County (by renting out cheap trailers and telling the renters how to vote) and persuaded county officials to pass a brothel-licensing ordinance, which came into effect in 1971. Joe Conforte was featured in
Look, June 29, 1971, the article titled "Legal Prostitution Spreads in Nevada'" by Gerald Astor,
Look Senior Editor. Joe was on the cover of
Rolling Stone magazine November 23, 1972. The
Nevada Supreme Court upheld the right of a county to legalize prostitution, and several counties followed suit. Conforte converted the trailers into a permanent structure with 54 bedrooms. In 1976, the world class boxer
Oscar Bonavena (1942–1976), who was a former friend of Conforte's and probably had an affair with his wife Sally, was shot dead at the ranch by Conforte's bodyguard.
Forfeiture and sale following tax fraud After losing a tax fraud case in 1990, the brothel was closed for three months and auctioned off. Conforte fled the
United States to
Brazil. The brothel was bought by a holding company and stayed open. After that company and the brothel's manager (a former county commissioner) lost a federal
fraud,
racketeering and conspiracy case in 1999, the Mustang Ranch was closed and forfeited to the federal government. That same year, the
Brazil Supreme Court ruled Conforte could not be extradited. In 2002, the brothel's furniture, paintings and accessories were auctioned off. The
Bureau of Land Management sold the Ranch's pink
stucco structures on
eBay in 2003. Bordello owner
Lance Gilman purchased the buildings for $145,100 and moved them to his
Wild Horse Adult Resort & Spa five miles (8 km) to the east, where the relocated and extensively renovated buildings eventually became the second brothel located at that complex. However, the rights to the name Mustang Ranch, which Gilman had hoped to use for this new brothel, were tied up in a court battle with David Burgess, the owner of the
Old Bridge Ranch, nephew of Joe Conforte, and manager of the Mustang Ranch from 1979 until 1989. In December 2006, a federal judge ruled that Gilman was the "exclusive owner of the Mustang Ranch trademark" giving him the rights to use the name and branding. In late March 2007, the final remaining building, the Annex II which had been bought for $8,600 by
Dennis Hof, was burned down in a fire department training exercise. A
Reno Gazette-Journal report cited plans for the restoration of natural conditions to the section of the
Truckee River flowing through the land, following the completion of a similar restoration five miles downstream on
McCarran Ranch land owned by
The Nature Conservancy. Contrary to a popular
urban legend circulated by email, the Mustang Ranch was never operated by the U.S. government. It was operated by the Bankruptcy Trustee appointed by the United States Bankruptcy Court on behalf of the United States Government. ==In media==