Lovers can lock their love in Lovelock

Starting on Valentine's Day, travelers on Interstate 80 across Nevada will be greeted by newly posted billboards at the town of Lovelock advising them: "Don't let love pass you by."

The billboard will urge visiting couples to "lock their love" and prompt them to take the next exit into Lovelock, 93 miles east of Reno. There they'll have an opportunity to follow an ancient Chinese tradition and symbolically lock their love by affixing a lock to a chain encircling the city's newest attraction, Lovers Lock Plaza.

Lovers Lock, situated in a park behind the historic round Pershing County Courthouse, will be publicly unveiled at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

The Nevada Commission on Tourism and the Lovelock/Pershing County Chamber of Commerce, playing on the city's name, created the attraction to draw more visitors into the town.

"Lovelock is a unique town with an ingenious idea to capitalize on its name," said Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, chairwoman of the tourism commission. "Engraving a heart-shaped lock and adding it to the chain is a fun way to say, 'I was here,' and symbolically declare one's love. Someday we hope to see locks throughout the town as travelers continue to add their own sign of love to the chains."

Hunt is scheduled to participate with local officials in the Valentine's Day ribbon-cutting for Lovers Lock and then join her fiancé, Las Vegas entertainer Dennis Bono, in locking their own love.

Tourism commission director Bruce Bommarito, first got the idea to create a Lovers Lock in Lovelock after hearing about the Chinese custom.

"Locking your love is a beautiful sentiment, and we hope it will entice travelers to leave a lasting symbol at Lovers Lock, and then stay and see what else this picturesque high desert town has to offer," he said.

Lovelock's other attractions include its unusual round courthouse, built in 1919, still used, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Chinese tradition of symbolically locking one's love by fastening a lock on a chain began high in the Yellow Mountains, where miles of lock-laden chains snake through the landscape. Lovelock has a Chinese history dating back to its turn-of-the-century mining and railroad heyday.

Heart-shaped locks are available free of charge at many businesses in Lovelock