The City of Las Vegas: The Early Years

[Music] the Mojave Desert is the hottest part of America but in this remote area a small group of determined people built a town [Music] the central point the central part of Las Vegas is development at the beginning and down to the present has been water there's an old saying in the West whiskey is for drinking water is for fighting over well there's a lot of truth to that we had the big Springs the Big Spring was a big spring it was 40 feet across there were several places you could literally take a very sharp stick and poke it into the ground and and and water would come up by 1900 what needed that water were machines machines that powered the great American push across the continent locomotives driven by steam Southern California's booming there's a population up in Salt Lake City that certainly is going to have a need for the railroad so how about a line that goes from the Salt Lake area to Southern California you know it was very similar to railroad towns all across the West when when the railroad would come through an area it would find the spot that it needed to have its rail yards its repair facilities all of that and would build a town around that [Music] Las Vegas would be that place on May 15th 1905 an overheated crowd bought 176 City Lots at auction a new town burst into being in one of the hottest and most remote places in America [Music] some 1,200 years ago the ancestral Puebloans farmed parts of what is now southern nevada they built elaborate dwellings in the cliffs left petroglyphs and vanished mysteriously then came the Paiutes in the summer they would go into the mountains when they got cold they've come in the valley grow gardens they were to look for the food follow it [Music] traveling through what would become known as the old Spanish Trail Explorer and merchant Antonio Armijo passed through the southern region of the Las Vegas Valley in 1830 another expedition into this rugged territory in 1844 that of Jhansi Fremont officially put Las Vegas and its water springs on a map printed by the United States Congress eleven years later Brigham Young sent a group of 30 Mormons to create a settlement they built a fort tried to farm the land and started a lead line but the colony suffered from crop failures and infighting after two years young called the mission back to Salt Lake the abandoned fort became a tiny outpost a ranch and stopping place for travelers on the Mormon trail by the turn of the century its owner was a woman Helen Stewart she wasn't born in Nevada and she didn't even come here willingly just before she turned 19 I believe she married him in 20 years her elder her husband Archbold wanted to do business in Las Vegas helen has to move to the nothing town of Las Vegas and it's I would say a rudimentary housing situation she wasn't happy to go to the wilderness Helen was a dutiful wife but she made him promise that they would only stay a couple years well about a mile and a half away there was another ranch owned by a man named Conrad Kyle and the Kyle ranch was a place where gunslingers hung out and robbers and people accused of rustling cattle and stealing horses and so on the Kyle's weren't very well disposed toward the Stewart's it was a Hatfield McCoy kind of feud situation one day in July 1884 the feud took a nasty turn a former ranch hand spread malicious rumors about Helen Archibald Stewart got on his horse and headed over to the Kyle ranch to avenge his wife's good name a few hours later a horseman came riding up with a note for Helen the note read mrs. Stewart send a team and take mr. Stewart away he is dead her husband had been killed in a gunfight as she's pregnant and she has to go and get her dead husband and bring him back home about the turn of the century 1900 the two sons of Conrad end up dead on the ranch two shot to death and it has always been a rumor and probably true that it was a revenge killing that Archibald Stewart's loose cannon son named Hiram is the one who snuck up to the ranch and shot the two boys to avenge his father's death there's the association of the Old West with kind of the law of the West vigilantism if you want to call it that there's a bit of that with Las Vegas before the founding of the town with Archibald's death Helen was on her own she had four children and another one was on the way she's a city girl basically but she learns how to run the ranch on her own for the next 18 years she ran a rest stop for travelers where they could rusticate along the banks of the creek under shady cottonwood trees she raised paddle peaches wine grapes and livestock and started a local post office the ranch became kind of a known welcome her to people who would come rest their caravans or their wagons she would always say if they were coming from the north she could see the dust and she'd start the coffee pot she basically was a pioneer in this valley the Las Vegas Valley when there were so few families [Music] in 1900 the population of the entire Valley was 30 people and they were very widely scattered for years Helen Stewart tried to sell the ranch and failed but for years reports kept coming someday a railroad would be built here and so after that she started buying up other pieces of land within within the Las Vegas Valley knowing that the railroad was coming she was the largest landholder in the Las Vegas Valley and then at last it happened in 1902 Helen Stewart sold the ranch for $55,000 to the San Pedro Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad in this remote spot far from anywhere the railroad would give birth to a town Jay T McWilliams was one of those people there's a little ahead of the curve he was a surveyor he was a bright human being he said he saw the future well in advance of other people McWilliams surveyed the property that was being sold by Helen Jay Stewart to the railroad company McWilliams saw the fact that there was water here and that this was where the railroad was going to build a community j.t thought you know this looks like a really good thing so he figured he'd get in there first he found 80 acres of property that had never been claimed so he purchased that and he laid out a town site he subdivided the original Las Vegas town site and he had it planted and he had it recorded and he said this is going to be Las Vegas that's what he called it he started selling lots to people who brought in all kinds of businesses homes there was of a blacksmith barber shops beauty shops you could buy a thimble or a thick ham a plow or a keg of beer some 900 people live there this was the beginning of the town of Las Vegas or was it [Music] well then Along Came William Andrews Clark you know senator from Montana with all his millions and millions of dollars the William Andrews Clark was one of the wealthiest men on earth at that time it was a time of unchecked corporate power in America new industries rose up left and right companies tried to crush each other gigantic monopolies emerged and a small number of men canny and ruthless became incredibly wealthy in industries like steel coal oil tobacco and railroads people called them the robber barons among them was William Andrews Clark Clark was the epitome of the self-made man he had been born to Pennsylvania dirt farmers and went to Montana to make his fortune at 33 Clark acquired a copper mine he soon put together an empire mines mills smelters banks stores newspapers and railroads his heart is frozen and his instincts are those of the Fox said one of his many detractors by 1902 Clark had infamously bought a seat in the US Senate and almost admitted it he was once quoted as saying I never bought a man who wasn't for sale you had clark looking at putting in a railroad between San Pedro California and Salt Lake City why am I going to put it here because there's a lot of mining districts along that route and I can make money hauling ore along this railroad route the Nevada mining boom began with the Comstock Lode in 1859 a vast silver strike near present-day Carson City the load triggered the greatest flood of migrants west since the California Gold Rush there were mines being opened all over Southern Nevada and they were big mines and they were producing and people with great ideas and great dreams to get rich quick we're coming to Southern Nevada they start building the railroad and then Clark runs smack into another major calling a robber baron call him an industrial Statesman Edward Henry Harriman of the Union Pacific eh Harriman the Union Pacific Railroad had the idea to build a railroad from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles well in advance of Senator Clark so they started butting heads in 1901 they really ran into each other there was a real kind of a battle between a1 and o3 they both start building railroad lines that are not in Las Vegas but they're outside of town and they're only a few yards apart basically the crews start fighting and finally they think well this has got to stop what are we going to do so they come to an agreement Clark bought out what Harriman had built coming south out of Salt Lake City partially by giving up half of his ownership in his railroad to Harriman by January 1905 the railroad through Las Vegas was finished with operational control of the San Pedro Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad shared with the Union Pacific Clark on his own invested in the construction of a rail line from Las Vegas to the booming central Nevada mining camps he came into the Las Vegas Valley with a great grandiose plan he came in thinking they were going to actually build a city from the ground up in the desert at the Las Vegas railway stop the senator made a speech from the back of his personal railroad car this is a beautiful Easter day but the chime of church bells does not greet us here on the desert a year from now we shall have churches and schools well William Andrews Clark really had no interest in Las Vegas someone if his stature barely got off the train when he came through here in theory at least the modern age was now about to arrive in the far end of the inhospitable mojave desert the railroad company plaited a new town just across the tracks from the McWilliams settlement they were going to have an auction they were going to sell the Lots here they were running trains in here and you could get on the train you could buy your ticket you could come here and buy a lot and be part of this new community to prepare for this event the developers had brought in a custom-made gigantic tent to serve as a hotel and a dining room sort of a pop-up hotel on May 15th and 16th 1905 railroad company representatives held the auction on a makeshift wooden platform to buyers this seemed like an incredible opportunity land with plentiful water in the Sun field southwest immediately you set up this tension between John Thomas McWilliams and his Las Vegas and William Andrews Clark and his Las Vegas they're completely different from the end of the earth William Andrews Clark is building a 10 million dollar mansion in New York 250 million dollars by today's standards the JD McWilliams ends up living in a 700 square foot house the railroad company was an overwhelming force the company made irresistible promises every lot would have water available all the streets would be graded and oiled Clark himself even promised the construction of his fine hotel and health sanitarium as can be found in the country just hours after the auction many abandoned the McWilliams Las Vegas town site people in his town site put their businesses their shacks their tents on skids and they rolled them across the tracks and purchase land across the tracks they want it to be in the official downtown and you can't blame them the newspapers pretty quickly go over to what Clark was doing in The Times they said oh now the town site over there is just like McWilliams no good some did stay in the original Las Vegas but it was already called rag town J T McWilliams would continue to fight but Clark had already won the war in the beginning some people were calling Las Vegas the city of destiny most everyone believed in the future of this new community Clark himself was living in Manhattan but for those who did live in Clarks new born town of Las Vegas in its first years life was not easy there were kinds of challenges in daily life beyond you know hauling water pumping water it was filthy the sanitation sanitation was throw it out in the backyard they would take waste from the stockyards of the railroad or from in town and dump it miners and prospectors would pass through and they often had burros and horses and so all that smell baked 100 degrees temperature no barriers from the heat no air-conditioning so if you can imagine 110 hundred 1520 degrees the stockyards inundated with flies the desk the desk there was nothing to keep the desks down you would be seeing clouds of dust it was just dust all over the place water was the very reason Las Vegas existed but water was a problem too the railroad company largely ran the town its land and water company controlled the water by late 1906 Walter Bracken was the head of the land and water company Walter Bracken was the person that the railroad hired to run the town so he was actually the railroad personified he had a great deal of power but not the power that people thought he had everything he did he had to get approved through the railroad authority and so if you wanted to subdivide an area and you wanted water from the water company he would say no and that controlled how the town grew it would be 22 years before Las Vegas municipal water reached the McWilliams settlement because there was plentiful water and even more plentiful sunshine new arrivals thought this would be a farming paradise they were urging people to come here to be farmers and that was before they really came to grips with the fact that the soil is not good here and this should not be an agricultural place within weeks many of the new lot holders had already given up people that came here expecting riches and wealth in this vibrant community left because they didn't find that there is absolutely nothing here that would entice anybody to stay it's an absolute last choice it's also a great place for a start though somebody can come here live in a tent get a job somewhere and get started fail and try and try again [Music] the sense of being out in in literally the middle of nowhere provided a great deal independent and with that independence a great deal freedom to how you wanted to live financial freedom personal freedom moral freedom you could come to Las Vegas and do what you wanted to do and probably succeed at it and if you don't then you it's probably your own fault the people at first that came to Las Vegas were either looking for a first start or a second start for the people who were looking one last chance [Music] the people coming in here sure some of them wanted to make money very quickly everybody wanted that because these were entrepreneurs so they were going to come here they were going to buy a lot they were going to build their house they were going to build a new business it was not a fleeting community you can't have a community that people only want to take from if that's all they want you're going to fail you have to have a community that people want to be a part of despite the myriad challenges a town rose quickly in the desert offering houses stores hotels saloons soon it would even feature some of the trappings of civilization there were three weekly newspapers and I have to tell you those as someone who worked for a daily newspaper in Las Vegas there wasn't enough news and you know you look back at those papers today and gee there's a story about somebody hosting a tea that there's a story about somebody hosting a bridge game [Music] but her school was a tent by the creek [Music] local citizens donated money to buy the old Salt Lake Hotel building and fix it up the new schoolhouse opened in October 1905 Charles Pemberton Squires came to Las Vegas in 1905 he's a business type looking for an opportunity and he proves it by getting himself into a bunch of different businesses his first one was apparently a hotel a tent hotel that was going to cater to the people who came up for the auction and so he's invested in the bank he's invested in this utility and he got involved in a lot of different things out here that made him an important figure the most important hard to say there are plenty of people who could compete for that title but he's certainly a key figure in early Las Vegas there's always an elite that sort of run things and in Las Vegas in those years 1905 to 1910 say there were families that really controlled the town the investors that had come from other parts of the country with lots of money to establish businesses [Music] a Chicagoan named Peter Buell came even before the auction Nevada got me when I got here there was no town only the two old ranches and a couple of tents I immediately went into the mining insurance and real estate games pewter bill was another another entrepreneur had his hands in lots of things but but people trusted him and believed in him Buell bought land as close to the railroad town site as he could and laid out subdivisions one of them named after himself well it's not that big a suburban development but the railroads attitude was we don't need that you want to do it go ahead and do it but we're not contributing to it the land and water company headed by Walter Bracken was not about to pipe the railroad companies water beyond their town site if you wanted to subdivide an area and you wanted water from the water company he would say no and that controlled how the town grew so if you were a business type who had big dreams if the dreams coincided with what the railroad folks wanted then you were fine if your dreams went beyond their boundaries then you had to find a way to make it happen Peter Buell started his own water syndicate soon he was drilling wells throughout the valley even so Las Vegas abounded in vacant lots and dust Burroughs left behind by prospectors wandered around the town occasionally they found their way into saloons as well certainly there were plenty of saloons because it was a railroad town and you're going to have a lot of people coming through a lot of transients coming through on the railroad and you're gonna have a lot of railroad work there's a lot of single railroad workers you were going to have people drinking you're gonna have people gambling you two blocks on the original map of the railroads town became famous and infamous block 16 and 17 the original intent of the railroad was that blocks 16 and 17 would be the only spots where you could have alcohol but the railroad company plan had a flaw there was a clause in the original agreement saying that if you had a hotel we're providing overnight lodging to people you could also serve alcohol and that was fine for the real hotels what's a wise guy said we're gonna open up a hotel and we're gonna have a bar people would take a bedroom or two upstairs over there store and claim that they were a boarding house or a hotel just so that they could sell alcohol to the most lavish block 16 establishment was the Arizona Club with mahogany columns and a 50 by 75 foot bar illuminated by Gaslight s-- one local man said a trip to the Arizona Club was just like going to a museum almost the Arizona Club offered nickel slot machines Faro roulette blackjack gambling was legal it often was out west Las Vegas wasn't a mining town but it's people adopted the standards of the rowdy wild frontier boom towns then you could come here and be absolutely yourself and do what you wanted to do that was the frontier mentality Sam Gay was a fixture at the Arizona Club Sam gay was the law of Las Vegas and what he did and how he lived said a great deal about Las Vegas he was born in Canada he came to Las Vegas in 1905 as a bouncer at the Arizona Club and Sam was a good six feet tall and probably about 250 pounds when he bounced you you stayed bounced in 1906 Sam Gay won election as town constable later he recalled those early days from 1905 to 1910 Las Vegas was a rough-and-tumble western town five men dead for breakfast one Sunday morning and ten men wounded one local kid remembered we lived on North 3rd Street and quite often in the nighttime we could hear rinky-dink piano playing when they put in the saloons they also brought in the girls block 16 became known as the town's red-light district the Arizona Club was the blocks centerpiece with its sawdust floors frenzied gamblers and painted ladies soil doves as they were called it's not as if the people here all came and said we're going to be perfectly good railroad employees and when we're not at work we'll be engaged in Bible study or concentrating on reading the great books [Music] but for those living in Las Vegas there was more importantly a deep sense of pride in the ability to survive in the rough landscape the growth of the town was a victory of Hardy individualism over the challenges of unforgiving nature [Music] in Las Vegas the railroad was the lifeline to the world the company hired hundreds of men close to a majority of the townspeople whether it was the town or the newspaper or the politicians in it if the railroad wanted something usually the railroad got it the railroad depot was the unquestioned center of the town it was a large mission-style building on Main Street but then came the financial panic of 1907 it smacked down Wall Street Commerce slowed to a crawl there isn't enough money in circulation people don't have money to spend mining stocks took a dive however senator Clark continued to build and finish a railroad to central Nevada from Las Vegas the railroad in 1980 nineteen nine decided to expand the shops that existed in Las Vegas build a machine shop that would not only repair the engines and build some engines from scratch so they basically took a keener and a more deliberate interest in Las Vegas they wanted to make the money off of the land that they owned here but they also wanted it to survive and become a good thriving community it's hard to say why Las Vegas succeeded where others failed in its early years but frankly the railroad is crucial in fact by 1909 the railroad company had built Las Vegas his first housing tract sixty-four cottages of concrete block in the California bungalow style the town was changing in 1908 a protest movement took hold in Las Vegas Las Vegas was beginning to feel its oats it was it was coming into its own many wanted nothing less than law and order a proper respectable City instead of the Wild West in 1907 the Town Board adopted ordinances that prohibited gross intoxication vile or obscene language upon the streets and any act detrimental to the public health safety or morals the ninth one is always interested me and that was that you weren't allowed to swear vulgar language and and it struck me as of the ten things that they needed an ordinance they needed one that talked about swearing and I could just imagine people running up and down the street swearing and each other and therefore we had a pass an ordinance but safety ordinances were not enough Las Vegas wanted two things their own County and their own City they wanted some control over their destiny from the very day Las Vegas was started there was a movement to have Lincoln County cut in half the county seat of Lincoln County was Pioche and that's almost 200 miles away from Las Vegas he wanted to get a business license he wanted to go to court if you have a an issue a law enforcement issue if he wanted to buy a piece of property all that had it be filed and the county seat which was several days away by train by buckboard by horse however however you got there and so if you were in Las Vegas you were gonna spend a week to file a document in 1908 the ubiquitous CP Squires bought the town's only surviving newspaper the Las Vegas age and used it as a platform to promote county division the Las Vegas age before the political finance ears of Pioche saddle another courthouse debt on the the south half should get out from under by division of the county so there was tremendous agitation particularly by head Clark and others to make las vegas the county seat of a brand new county Clark County Edie Clark was a quiet man who quietly ran almost everything he actually grew up in Pioche but from the time las vegas began he ran a frating business that was also a general merchandise store selling everything from bridal bits to pocket combs in those days we didn't have much trouble selling our stock if a man came in with a number 7 foot and we had only number 9 shoes he took the nines people had to buy what the store had on hand or go without but ed Clark was no simple shopkeeper he became the treasurer of Lincoln County the most powerful banker in town the man who largely controlled the power and telephone companies and Edie Clark pushed through the creation of a new County the new county seat Las Vegas [Music] edie Clark might have sold the idea of the new county but it would be named after senator William a Clark the senator would leave a legacy that was mixed at best Mark Twain wrote he is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere he is a shame to the American nation he wasn't thinking of the interests of Las Vegas he was thinking of the interests of William Andrews Clark you know he was always about making the money William a Clark never lived in the town he created or the county named after him by 1909 the former senator was building a mansion on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan with over 120 rooms but you have to give him credit he's the one that actually had the railroad built through here and without the railroad there would not have been a las vegas/clark county was born on July 1st 1909 in Las Vegas bells rang cannons boom and firecrackers bang the glee club sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic and the crowd sang along the celebration featured a baseball game burro and wheelbarrow races a hose contest between volunteer fire departments a band concert and even a ball at the fancy new Opera House the Las Vegas age wrote the Opera House was decorated in the national colours the music excellent and a gay crowd tripped the light fantastic until a late hour Las Vegas was a county seat of a new County but Las Vegas was still a town that was more or less run by the Las Vegas Land and Water Company they thought that they needed a government you could pass ordinances but you really needed a city an incorporated city they needed things such as a justice system in a courthouse and a library and the proper paved streets and water delivery and Seward you have the issue of just waste disposal in general and all of a sudden flies descend on the community it was a nasty place to live and there were stories on a regular basis in the newspapers we have to clean up our community that sewer system back then is a huge deal the police department two people and one was the night watchman power system lighting this sort of things they could pull bonds through the development of our city proper of government proper Las Vegas gets incorporated in 1911 it means that they can govern themselves in a way that they couldn't before the newly incorporated city elected the eternally optimistic Peter Buell as its first mayor and head booster Peter Buell was known to most people that he was as good as his handshake that was something that that went well in that era and silt'e the say of course but in that time to where you had to quickly know who you could trust and who you couldn't trust and Peter Beale was one of those people that people trusted the Las Vegas age reported the young desert settlements stuck in the middle of nowhere was now stepping out and a city was actually taking shape by 1910 Las Vegas had ten miles of graded and curved streets electric lights a water system a new hospital six hotels and several lodging houses two churches a volunteer fire department five general merchandise stores for clothing stores a hardware store a woman's clothing store three barber shops a bakery and six restaurants with its massive ice house Las Vegas were never without an ice cream cone or a cold beer even on the hottest days of summer if you're thinking of what the West was like at the time this is a pretty good example they had established a town just a typical American town where people lived and earned their money went to their jobs went to the bank went to the movies went to school marching bands you know all of this sort of thing an impressive new school building opened its doors in 1911 you know most people when they think about the history of the American West they still tend to think old cowboys and Indians and oh the rugged Plains and the rugged travelers and so on they tend to forget that a lot of the history of the West is developing little towns by 1910 Las Vegas is five years old we're still you know we're five years away from being sand these are people that that in five years have gone from a tent in the desert to stone brick wooden homes and new businesses electric lights and trees on the street and and talking about are we going to pay part of downtown probably that period was the closest that Las Vegas came to being a typical American city than it ever was after that but at that remote point in its history it really hadn't made those deals with the devil yet and it was just a small town Las Vegas was so miniscule on the bigger picture that small things were a big success the original school burns down and you build a new one the new church opens that sort of thing and then in 1911 we got our silent film theater and that changed Las Vegas in so many ways because it brought in something called newsreel [Music] of course there was no radio at the time to be able to see what was going on the world moving in silent pictures the newsreel that changed Las Vegas [Music] the original Las Vegas were not so lucky Native Americans had been dispossessed without a treaty the way were non-native people and it would actually take areas with a pipe people were living and just move them off and say you gotta leave or shoot him but in 1911 the Paiute Tribe got a small piece of their land back ten acres of Helen Stewart land became the Las Vegas Indian colony they were kind of abandoned and left to this multi acre parcel they lived without water in the 1960s and 70s are being taken and we had to find places stay it was a sad time but we still here [Music] Las Vegas was still a small town just over a thousand people lived there the 1910 census listed fewer than 60 Hispanic people 17 Japanese men four Chinese men and just 16 African Americans race without question divided the nation [Music] on July 4th 1910 a prize fight between two men both symbolized and sparked racial hatred across the country Jack Johnson African American boxer Jim Jeffries was called the great white hope about a month before the fight was to take place they banned it from occurring in California the folks in Las Vegas said well put her on in Las Vegas but Reno got the fight a boiling crowd of some 20,000 people mostly white throng to the event in Las Vegas the gentleman that owned the bar right across the street from the railroad depot the Overland hotel he convinced the City Council to allow them to temporarily string a telegraph wire from the railroad depot across the street over to his far that was the first sports bar of his sign Johnson won by a knockout his victory sparked racial strife all over the nation but a calm prevails over Las Vegas many of the minorities Mexicans african-americans and others had come to work for the railroad and lived in the community the majority of the population in Las Vegas at the early days we're individuals who came from somewhere else there's this small diverse group of people that came from all different places there wasn't racial friction because the minorities were so such a small percent of the population people were living together working together however Las Vegas was not completely free from discrimination Walter Bracken of the land and water company wanted minorities to live in specific sections of town our colored population Mexicans etc is growing very rapidly and unless we have some place for this class of people they will be scattered all through town people are traveling here from all over the country bringing their ideas and their beliefs with them so those negative attitudes travel to the new town right along with all other attitudes any place in the country you would have seen segregated communities but in the beginning we didn't see it as vividly as we began to see it later on because everyone worked on the railroad even in the 19-teens Las Vegas was still largely isolated from mainstream America most of the city's issues were about the city but a national movement did play a part in Las Vegas the progressive movement progressives aim to reform a whole array of social evils they believed that corporate monopolies should be taken down the child labor should be stamped out that the working and living conditions of America's poor were a blight on our country's good name a central part of the progressive mindset was moral outrage against what was seen as sinfulness prostitution alcohol gambling who banned all gambling in Nevada all gambling and that went into effect 1910 it was even made illegal if you can imagine this to flip a coin to make a decision was it a progressive era in Las Vegas was it was part of that but at the same time there was still this we of are self-sufficient we are gonna make our own rules gambling was illegal in Nevada but it still went on sheriff Sam Gay was the man who was supposed to enforce the law but the sheriff was not keen the story was Sam gay was that some of these things that that that happened were just sort of let go cuz even but probably much rather sit down have a beer with you than waste time walking you down to the jail by 1915 it was again legal to bet on several games including poker the wild nightlife of block 16 rolled along even sheriff Gaye could run afoul of the law he was quite a drinker early on he was arrested in it was 1915 because he got drunk and started shooting out all the electric lights on Fremont Street Music was everywhere on block 16 one day in 1917 perhaps the greatest ragtime pianist of them all came to play the gem saloon Jelly Roll Morton he came to Las Vegas because the love of his life Anita Gonzalez was running a house of ill-repute on block 16 later Jelly Roll recalled Anita bought a saloon business in a little town called Las Vegas Nevada and she made a lot of money she came up to see me and we got back together so I tried lost with it as well but it was too doggone cold in the winter and too hot in the summer it was here for a brief period of time that is marked by the Clark County grand jury issuing a a notice saying that there was too much piano playing that was going on on block 16 and there were black men and white women that were seen together this had to come to an end [Music] meanwhile the National temperance movement kept gaining steam groups like the anti-saloon League became massively popular in 1918 the issue of alcohol came to a statewide vote and the anti alcohol side won easily we went throught a year before the nation went dry authorities in other parts of the country took to smashing bottles in Publix moonshiners were dragged out and taken away stills painstakingly smashed to rubble but at first Las Vegas was a different story Las Vegas never did really like the idea of social engineering by law we weren't real good with that and so when the state went dry we didn't pay much attention to that in the early days of prohibition Las Vegas hardly seemed to notice for one thing Sam gay was still the law he thought it was a dumb idea that you could tell somebody not to take a drink so he wouldn't enforce it the town was not so much try as it was damp much of the elements of the progressive movement really just didn't fit the scope of what was happening in Las Vegas most of those elements are really tied to big-city struggles and issues and problems but there was one aspect of progressivism where Nevada was far ahead of the curve [Music] many of the progressives were women perhaps their greatest goal was enfranchisement the right to vote Las Vegas did not have any suffrage organizations but they did have the mesquite Club the mesquite Club in 1911 becomes the place for the women Helen Stewart is one of the co-founders Delphine Squires who is married to the editor of the aged Charles Squires is one of the founders in October 1912 Delphine Squires received a telegram the redoubtable Charlotte Perkins Gilman was coming to Las Vegas could mrs. Squires find a hall where Gilman could speak Charlotte Perkins Gilman was 52 years old a well-known graphic artist writer and prominent feminist in her celebrated story the Yellow Wallpaper a woman confined to a room by an unjust husband begins to see the figure of a woman her symbolic double trapped in the pattern of the Yellow Wallpaper women Gilman felt were both trapped and misunderstood in a male-dominated society like most Las Vegas women Delphine Squires was not so radical as Charlotte Perkins Gilman now Delphine was herself in favor of women voting but she didn't like to rock the boat her thought was you know you got to be nice to the man because there are the ones who are gonna grant us the vote Delphine Squires did find a halt for Gilman but only as part of a campaign rally featuring a male senator Frances Newlands when Charlotte found out she was furious and so she ended up talking on a street corner standing in an open roofed car giving her spiel a lot of the listeners were male and they razzed her Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote Nevada should show the world that it is not ruled by the desires of its desultory transient bachelor residents those who wish to move at the head of the procession instead of sitting still in the rear will vote for equal suffrage in Nevada on November 3rd 1914 the men of Nevada in a statewide election did give Nevada women the right to vote almost six years before an amendment to the Constitution made suffrage for women the law of the land the women of Las Vegas had that most basic right suffrage was only part of a larger 20th century trend a new kind of woman was emerging in America and that's just what she was called the new woman young women were moving to big cities alone getting office jobs becoming independent in a new and exhilarating way the new woman even came to Las Vegas with a melodrama called the hazards of Helen starring Helen Holmes [Music] in the hazards Helen played a brave quick-thinking independent heroine [Music] Helen Holmes became internationally known as the railroad girl she was a telegrapher and rather than be tied up on the railroad tracks Helen would be the one that would solve the crime that would jump from rail ricard a railroad car after the bad guys Holmes did most of her own stunts they shot four episodes in Las Vegas including one on Fremont Street where the are telegrapher office is right in them in the middle of the street they came back again in 1916 and did the girl in the game another series of episodic stories again that went worldwide [Music] she felt comfortable in Las Vegas she would later marry a rodeo star she was a Wild West girl but in a sense Las Vegas already had its own new woman / Wild West girl the first woman elected to office in Clark County was none other than Helen Stewart by now she was called the first lady of Las Vegas she lived quietly in the valley collecting Paiute baskets doing community work she started a school and a church Helen Stewart had seen a lot of Las Vegas history [Music] by late 1914 a war was going on world war one broke out in Europe should the United States join on the Allied side President Woodrow Wilson didn't think so at first the majority of the American people agreed by late 1914 Germany had occupied Belgium Las Vegas was a long way from the destruction in Europe and another transformation was taking place in America the railroad had built much of the American West but in the 19-teens a craze for a new kind of Transportation swept across the country [Music] in Detroit the Ford Motor Company was whipping out mass-produced autos on moving assembly lines using completely interchangeable parts a Model T rolled off the line every three minutes the automobile would transform the appearance of the nation and the habits of its people the streets of Las Vegas were not yet paved with asphalt but in 1913 local leaders auto manufacturers and hobby drivers began to agitate for an all-weather road to Los Angeles auto enthusiasts organized a Southern Nevada Automobile Club taking recreational drives together usually packing water food shovels and tools just in case in 1914 construction began on a highway to connect Las Vegas to the world even now only a couple thousand people lived in Las Vegas but they were building toward a future they hoped would come a Las Vegas needed to have some place where you could conduct business and they had some little Adobe looking Spanish mission looking temporary courthouses kind of thing and Las Vegas felt that it deserved more it had kind of an inferiority complex because of where it was the city hired a hot new architect to build a new one Frederik de longshots was born and raised in Nevada at first he was a mining engineer but by 1908 he described himself as an architect without ever studying architecture in school day long Schultz soon became Nevada's leading architect he took the old Nevada State Capitol and gave it wings DeLong chomps was building in that Belle Epoque period in the early 20th century and rather grandiose buildings and he built a number of courthouses around the state and around the country in public buildings and so Las Vegas said yeah grande that's what we've got to have it's gonna be right in the middle of town surrounded with a beautiful park and it's gonna be you know build it and they will come construction on the new Clark County Courthouse began in 1914 so they built it and it was a really kind of fantastic building it had elements of Romanesque architecture and Spanish Revival and Mission Revival and Corinthian columns and it was just this great conglomeration of architectural styles it looked just too grand for this little desert town but they they they had to have it because it was something that lost faith could take pride in and they could point to and say see we're a real town you should come and invest your money here because we have a serious place to do such business and that was the DeLong chomps courthouse over the course of a long career the largely self-taught architect would win many awards and much of his work was enshrined in the National Register of Historic Places the courthouse would not be one of those places it was demolished in the 1950s but I always have felt that that kind of set of precedent in Las Vegas build a bigger bill that grander build it wilder and people will come and sure as how they do as Las Vegas continued to grow the new grammar and high school saw its first group of students graduate in June 1914 that graduating class had a total of 6 students the class motto was we have crossed the bay the ocean lies before us at the time few could predict how true that motto would become in April 1917 the United States entered the war LasVegas were eager to be a patriotic service patriotism as always was was strong in in Las Vegas during that period of time and in support of the war effort everybody's got to register for the draft but even before they have to register we're sending men and boys you know to Fort Lewis we're sending them overseas nearly 1,500 men from Nevada went off to war World War one that's the one that that brings us into the world brings the world into us because of the fact and we're now sending our boys overseas there are lots of things that that set route in town because of the war we have finally figured out oh we're not just in the middle of the desert we're part of the rest of the world lost bagans held meatless days and wheatless days to support the boys we've got you know the Red Cross starting here we've got women's groups starting here a war bond Drive raised over eighty seven thousand dollars a liberty loan drive was also successful and the state of Nevada led the nation per capita in chipping in for the war but the gung-ho patriotism had its dark side there was an organization called the American Protective League a very secret organization the APL searched for slackers and German sympathizers claiming that America was home to a quarter million German spies there were challenges within the railroad unions of buying bonds if you didn't buy enough bonds you could be ostracized there was one gentleman that didn't buy a bond and he was tarred and feathered and and he realized that afterwards that the money was needed for his pregnant wife there was a great spirit of patriotism that occasionally got out of hand Alfonso and Philip callek were cousins living in Las Vegas and working for the railroad both were members of the Rin con Band of Mission Indians when war broke out they joined the army the 91st Wild West Division a soulful assortment of young Cowboys merchants hotel clerks farmers miners railroad workers and Native Americans a mixture that summed up both the poetry and the nitty gritty reality of the West Philip Alec wrote home speaking of health I never felt better in my life they sure do feed us fine chicken every Sunday oh boy those bayonets sure do look fierce time may come when we may make good use of them some 20,000 men in the Wild West division were shipped to the lethal fields and trenches of France about 800 of them died there many in the 47 days of hell call the meuse-argonne offensive among the dead where the cowlick cousins killed on exactly the same day on September 29 1918 both were buried in France and lie there still all told nine men from Clark County lost their lives by late 1918 the Allies were winning the war but at the same time death began to come in another form all over the world in just a few months the influenza epidemic of 1918 killed far more people than World War one itself all over the country people were getting sick and then they were dying the flu killed over 195 thousand Americans that October the deadliest month in this nation's history on November 4th an emergency session of the Las Vegas City Commission passed an extraordinary ordinance everyone within city limits shall at all times and all places where upon the face a mask masks were used all over the country but they did not help the poorest masks were no serious restraint to the tiny influenza microbes it was like trying to keep out dust with chicken wire by November 9th the Las Vegas age reported there is difficulty in getting sufficient caskets for the dead just two days later the world went into collective ecstasy it was November 11th World War one was over people paraded in the streets many wearing masks yet the celebration was double the war was over and the worst of the epidemic was passing by conservative estimate the flu killed 550,000 Americans in 10 months we lost over that period of time between 50 and 60 people that that died and and some lingered on for a years oh it hit hard it hit this community very hard despite the flu Las Vegas thrive during World War one the demand for resources boosted mining production making the city's economy as a transportation hub flourish but the railroads were slowing down in 1917 the Las Vegas and Tonopah railroad went broke when mining also slowed after the war more railroad workers were laid off Las Vegas really went through some some deep struggles the early years all the way up through 1920 Vegas which is kind of hanging on as a small town and doing their part Las Vegas was lucky it had an economic underpinning that allowed it to continue it had people that wanted a community they were not here just boom in 1922 prophecies of the future appeared in Las Vegas one arrived by air on May 7th 1920 an army reserve pilot named Randall Henderson landed his Curtiss Jenny biplane on a plot of naked dirt in Las Vegas this was the first plane to come in and it landed and everybody in town had to come out and see it and Randall stayed here for three days took people up in flights you know did some barnstorming while he was here and so we were actually by 1920 we were on the airway maps we had our first Airport here and we had entered the air age and we never looked back another clue to the Future arrived that same year of 1920 a state appointed Commission began investigating Nevada's interests on the Colorado River what was interesting was the idea of a dam even from 1905 and before there were always these thoughts of harnessing the Colorado River either for electrical or irrigation in the late teens that idea started the catch hole in Congress there was an organization called the League of the Southwest Pops choirs from Las Vegas was one of the movers and shakers than it was the League of the Southwest that really agitated with the government to build a dam both CP Squires and Edie Clark were on the state commission and they were men who usually got what they wanted they would push the notion of a dam for years and of course they would succeed a dam could provide an enormous water supply allowing a small town not far away to grow [Music] water after all had always been at the center of most Las Vegas stories the ancient Pueblo ins and PI Utes spent time in the valley because of the water there Jhansi Fremont bathed in that same water in 1844 Brigham Young sent his people to Las Vegas because of that water in 1855 that water was the wellspring for Helen Stuart's ranch Senator William Clark built his town because of the water Jay T McWilliams town lost out because of water Pete Buell started a Water Company and Walter Bracken ran one water had built Las Vegas and it would be the foundation of the future no one in 1920 could have imagined the Las Vegas to come it was poised on the cusp of enormous change but even in 1920 the change had come a settlement had been created in the dust a ranch had become a town then an incorporated city a settlement without government had become a county seat a place where people stopped on the way to somewhere else had become a community with a life of its own Las Vegas is not a typical town that tiny few years at the very beginning was the closest that it ever came but after that it never was again and it never will be well what Las Vegas started with was an independence and that independence set the groundwork for I think what Las Vegas is today despite everything Las Vegas was still here and in time the world would come here too [Music]

Channel: KCLV Channel 2

Views: 3,306,671

Rating: 4.7150998 out of 5

Keywords: CLV - The Early Years - 051519, clvsagev, las vegas history, sagev sal

Id: czyMm5DdqAY

Length: 74min 58sec (4498 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2019