Tahoe Reno Industrial Center Exit, Nevada

At Exit 32 on Interstate 80, 32 miles east of the California State Line, is the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, a privately owned industrial park outside Reno that covers 167 square miles of land, possibly sufficient to support its claim to being “the world’s largest industrial center.” The Reno region is becoming a major supply base for the San Francisco Bay Area, less than four hours away - one round trip in a day for a trucker. TRIC started as an industrial park development in the late 1990s, when developers Lance Gilman, and his partner Roger Norman, purchased a ranch owned by Gulf Oil of Canada for $20 million. The land covered 162 square miles, more than half of Storey County (a county which includes Virginia City, the fabled silver boomtown from the Comstock days, which at its peak in the 1860s was the largest city in the state. Now its one of the least populated counties in the state). In the 2000s, large logistics warehouses for Petsmart, Walmart, and others were developed, later followed by Prologis, Zulily, Jet.com, and eBay. It was the announcement of TRIC as the site for Tesla’s “Gigafactory” in 2014, when things at TRIC really turned. It now has a major data center, and additional fulfillment warehouses.