Back twenty years to... Sunday, April 30th, 2006. Day 22. Casino culture, Cat-houses, and a lost ten hours on America’s loneliest road. A super Saturday night out in ‘Vegas with an old friend from back-home – and a drive across the iconic Hoover Dam.

"It’s raining hard as I leave the campsite, on a sleepy Sunday morning, and I just floor-it on Interstate 80 – a hundred and-twenty miles due-west to Nevada. Cruise-control set at seventy-five. Making up miles. Making up time. An eye-catching piece of sculpture now. 'Metaphor: The Tree of Utah'. Twenty miles or-so further west, is the 'Bonneville Salt Flats Speedway'. "Land Speed Capital of the World." I turn off the Interstate at exit 2 for Wendover, on the Utah side of the border. Pawn shops and thrift stores, along with a scattering of closed-up business premises.

Little do I know it now, but I’m about to experience my first-ever, but possibly most dramatic, 'Border Revelation', where a small town is quite literally and unceremoniously, 'split-in-two'. Where differing State Laws make for a surreal and astonishing transformation – as the highway crosses beyond the State-line.

So, in absolute and grotesque contrast to Wendover – on the Nevada side, in West Wendover, there are two lavish and ostentatious casinos. Each ablaze with neon, chrome and 'fibreglass gold'. Glamour and glitz. For me, it’s entirely reminiscent of East and West Berlin – before the so-hated wall came down. Visually at least, West Wendover positively screams towards Utah – all about its relaxed liberal values, big-time gambling operations, super-loose liquor laws and legal and widespread prostitution.

Having found a campsite for the night, I’m propping-up the bar at the 'Red Garter Casino', gazing up at the plasma screens – offering hair-replacement, home-improvement – and sport. NBA basketball on the left screen, NFL football on the right. A gambling machine is cut-into the bar at every high-stool spot, and the punters sip their free drinks, feed-in money, and lethargically poke at the interactive blackjack buttons on the screen. Sometimes – very occasionally, money comes back out. Now I change bars and watch a slick, all-black show-band oozing-out 'sweet soul favourites'. The whole casino ambiance is designed and engineered to numb one’s senses and disable one's mind. Soporific. Hypnotic. Near-on 'Coma-inducing' – as the seductive machinery graciously but purposefully, robs you of your money – and perpetually and persuasively, invites you to feed it more. A three six five, twenty-four seven – gold mine."

In Search of Small-Town America: Volume 1 is a free-of-charge Pdf digital download – available from our shop. A table of contents, the introduction, the route-map – and featuring content on the first two States travelled: New Mexico and Arizona.

Jeremy Hammond I am a British writer and photographer, and have travelled through India, China, Southeast Asia and Australia, but most extensively in North America. In the late seventies and early eighties, I worked as lighting crew, and later designer, for many top-named British bands, on tours through Europe, Japan, and the USA. I’ve worked as a cruise-ship photographer, in office and store design, database design, visual arts book publishing and as a London-based freelance photographer, specialising in interiors and architecture.