[heart monitor
beeping consistently] [wind blowing] [rattlesnake rattles] [insects chirp] [♪♪♪] NARRATOR: The Mojave Desert
was not an especially welcoming site for a town. But that's where Las Vegas
was born. [old-time music] By 1920, the town had survived
for fifteen years. [old-time music] [dinner bell ringing] From the beginning,
Las Vegas was a railroad town, built for, and relying on,
the powerful iron horse. But in the early 1920s,
Las Vegans discovered another connection to the world. The automobile. On a road called
the Arrowhead Trail, people could now drive
all the way to Los Angeles. Las Vegas was still small,
but it was on the move. As the Twenties advanced,
its citizens would bring home more and more of the marvelous
tools of the modern world. It was radios. It was long-distance
telephone calls. It was daily air mails. And it was talkies. [indistinct dialogue] Every day you would
read the newspaper and something new was going on. NARRATOR: The Twenties
would be a decade of strife -- of busted bootleggers
and a contentious strike. But it was also a time
of boundless dreams... a decade that reinvented
Las Vegas. The Twenties pointed the way
toward a future that would be big, bold --
and almost unbelievable. [♪♪♪] [birds chirping] [♪♪♪] NARRATOR: In 1920,
Las Vegas was a city of just over 2,300 people. Ed von Tobel Jr.
recalled growing up here. VON TOBEL: People used to walk
down to the railroad depot to see that big old
steam engine come in. DENNIS MCBRIDE:
Las Vegas in the 1920s still was a small town. Everybody knew each other. NARRATOR: Life in the desert
in the early Twenties was not for everyone. In summers there was no
real relief from the heat. JOAN WHITELY:
There was no air conditioning. So to live here in the summer
you had to be a trouper. NARRATOR: Many homes
lacked indoor plumbing. CLAYTEE WHITE:
Living conditions in Las Vegas were not up to standards
for everybody. Some of the houses
were more like shacks and tents. NARRATOR: In the early Twenties
farmers and ranchers still drove into town
to sell their goods. Dean Pulsipher: PULSIPHER: I used to come
to Vegas with my father when I was eight, ten years old. We used to bring down
a wagonload of chickens. We'd bring them to Las Vegas,
and we'd park on Fremont Street. I remember Fremont Street. There was nothing on
Fremont Street -- all dirt. Not a paved road anywhere. NARRATOR: Another young man
came in with milk from the family dairy farm. Lamar Foremaster: FOREMASTER: I was peddling milk
in an old Model T Ford and it had rained pretty good
the night before and I got stuck right in front of what's now
the Golden Nugget. My dad had to come from the old
ranch with a team of horses and pull the Model T Ford
out of the mud so I could go on delivering
the rest of the milk. - MAN: Hya!
- [horses clopping] ERIC NYSTROM:
There was some farming. There was the kind of thing
that any town of several thousand people
would need -- banks and stores and barbers, and everybody's hair grows
right? Like that kind of thing. But it was a stable community. But it was a town that didn't
really have a future. It was looking to be
something beyond what it was. [♪♪♪] NARRATOR: In 1920, Las Vegas
was not only small. It was also young --
just 15 years old. Back in the first years
of the 20th century, the area's natural springs
had drawn the interest of a tycoon
named William A. Clark. His railroad needed a place between Salt Lake City
and Los Angeles where trains could stop
for water and repairs. The railroad bought
a chunk of land. In May 1905, a large crowd
stood in the blistering sun to buy small plots of it
at auction. For many, this was
the birth of Las Vegas. With Las Vegas, everything
focused on two things: it was always water and it
was always transportation. The city was laid out
in terms of the railroad. The railroads still controlled
the water, so it still controlled
how the city was growing. NARRATOR: By 1920
the people of Las Vegas were proud of
their accomplishments. But there was a lot more to do. MICHEL GREEN:
You're getting more concern about the kinds of sanitation, the kinds of sanitary conditions
that a larger town needs. There are people who are
still going around with the idea we can expand, we can develop, we can do new things
with this community. HALL-PATTON: The thing we
have to remember about Las Vegas is it always thought of itself
as a community. This was a town that
was going to be a city. This was a town that was
going to continue to exist. It wasn't a one shot deal. This was a town that was going
to be a business center for the area, even though it was out in the middle
of the desert. [♪♪♪] [lively music] NARRATOR: From the beginning,
the desert way-station for the railroad had
served another function: it had always been a place where
a man could get a drink. Before Prohibition,
Las Vegas had 12 bars, some inside hotels. MCBRIDE: Of course in Las Vegas
there was always, always liquor available and in particular
in this area called Block 16. Now, when they were laying out
the town site, they set aside two blocks,
block 16 and blocks 17 and that was
the red light district. And that was where
the sawdust joints were for the gambling
and drinking. NARRATOR: In America at large,
the Volstead Act of 1920 kicked off the wild decade
called the Roaring Twenties. The Act outlawed the production,
transportation, and sale of alcohol. - [glass shattering]
- [swing music] Las Vegas was in
the forefront of Prohibition. It voted for Prohibition
before it went into effect across the United States. We in Nevada,
we got rid of alcohol before national Prohibition. Now does that mean
we closed all the bars here? No. It means we took down
all the signs. Our idea of Prohibition was
"Don't put up any signs that advertise what kind
of beer you have." MICHAEL GREEN: Prohibition means
that when you're very visible on Fremont Street you kind of
have to pull in your horns, dial it back. Sam Gay is
the legendary Sheriff at Clark County when
Prohibition comes in. NARRATOR: Many of
the bootleggers distilled their hooch outside of town --
under Sam Gay's jurisdiction. In theory. He didn't see any reason
to go after bootleggers... "Psh, drink whatever you want
to drink, I don't care!" Sam Gay's attitude is, if
you're not bothering people I'm not bothering you,
so it's okay. NARRATOR: Prohibition would be a
wild ride for some in Las Vegas. But for many in the city,
the Twenties would be an emotional roller-coaster
for a very different reason: There was now talk of a dam
on the mighty Colorado. - [♪♪♪]
- [water splashing] The Colorado River
was not America's longest or widest river. But it captured
the human imagination because it was a river
of incredible energy, beauty... and violence. The Colorado River
was very... wild. And you couldn't depend on it
staying in one place for very long. The floods came down
in the winter. It would change its bank. It would go here,
it would go there. And it got away from them during
a big flood in 1905 and the Colorado River
changed its course and flowed right through
the Imperial Valley into the Salton Sink
and it became the Salton Sea, which is still there today. The Imperial Valley had the very
southern end of California. It was producing meat,
cattle pigs, chickens. It became a really important
bread basket for the country. There had been talk of building
a dam on the Colorado going back into
the mid-19th century. People wanted to control it. The League of the Southwest
is formed, and these are the seven states
that share the Colorado. DENNIS MCBRIDE:
The League of the Southwest, they began gathering
representatives from all of the seven states of
the Colorado River basin and that included a man
from Las Vegas named Charles Pemberton Squires,
Pop Squires. C.P. Squires is one of
the developers and one of the promoters of Las Vegas
who came here in 1905. NARRATOR:
In the early days of Las Vegas, Squires and his partners helped
finance a tent hotel, a bank, a real estate firm,
and the first electric power and telephone companies
in Las Vegas. He invested in lumber
and mining too. In 1908 he bought the Las Vegas
Age newspaper. He really was not
a newspaper man. He was a promoter of Las Vegas. NARRATOR: C.P. Squires
fervently believed that the destiny of Las Vegas
was linked with one very large object. C.P. Squires: SQUIRES: I knew there was one
thing above all that Nevada, especially Las Vegas, needed. That was a dam
in the Colorado River. NARRATOR:
Florence Boyer: BOYER: My father, C.P. Squires,
was an early, untiring advocate of the dam. It seemed to ensure
a prosperous future for his beloved Las Vegas. I'm sure no single person
devoted more time and effort towards that project. He was one of
the greatest boosters so he got involved with
the League of the Southwest. NARRATOR: The League
lobbied congress and in 1920 the government
funded an engineering study of the Colorado. That April Walker Young of the
Federal Bureau of Reclamation sent out geologist Homer Hamlin. WALKER YOUNG: Homer reported
that there were damsites in Boulder Canyon that would
meet the requirements but if the damsites in Boulder
Canyon were not suitable, there was another site 20 miles
downstream in Black Canyon. NARRATOR: So Walker Young
led a 58-person expedition to Boulder Canyon to compile
a detailed engineering study. The job would take two years. All the while,
enthusiasm for a dam began bubbling up
in southern Nevada. MCBRIDE: Las Vegas boosters
said, well that's going to bring an enormous amount
of business into town. NARRATOR: Helen J. Stewart
was one of those boosters. A Las Vegas pioneer, Helen arrived in Nevada
at 19, in 1873. Her husband was killed
in a gunfight but she stayed in their remote
ranch in the Las Vegas Valley and raised her five children
without him. In 1902, she sold land to the
railroad to create the new town. Now, in 1920, she wrote
eloquently of the city's future: HELEN STEWART: "Wait until
they have the Colorado River harnessed to a big Dam. When the great waters of
the Colorado are controlled by man's will and ingenuity, we can get the big pumps
to going and pump water over this wonderfully prolific
valley land." NARRATOR: By the next spring,
Helen Stewart like many others was convinced: yes,
the dam was coming soon. The optimism was that
this going to happen and Las Vegas
was going to profit from it. NARRATOR: "Las Vegas
is feeling the spur. People are ready to embark
in any sort of development enterprise
promising profit. This influx includes
small farmers, land seekers, prospectors, geologists,
engineers, representatives of capital... It is the beginning
of a movement with Las Vegas as its natural
point of concentration." [marching music] NARRATOR: In March
of the same year, a distinguished American
visited Las Vegas. Herbert Hoover. Hoover was then
Secretary of Commerce. Six years later,
he would be elected President of the United States. He had become popular
for having engineered the feeding of starving people
in Europe during World War I. Now he took on
an impossible job. As Chairman of the Colorado
River Commission, he would have to get
seven western states to agree on a dam, then form
a seven-state compact. But there had never been a
compact among so many states. And Arizona wanted
no part of a dam at all. Everybody agreed except Arizona and they fought it
and fought it. NARRATOR: After four days,
the first meeting of the Commission broke down
with no agreement. Even so,
in that spring of 1922, U. S. Congressman
Phil Swing of California introduced a bill to fund
a Boulder Canyon dam. MCBRIDE: Las Vegas was sending
people like Pop Squires to Washington
to lobby for it. NARRATOR:
Squires' newspaper: "SAYS BOULDER CANYON
DAM A CERTAINTY." But no.
It was not a certainty. Swing's bill met
tremendous opposition. Private utility companies fought
tooth and nail against any attempt to allow the government
to create electric power. Then the Boulder Canyon
Project Act was introduced in Congress
and lost and lost. People in Las Vegas
would get their hopes up it's going to happen,
it's going to happen, and it didn't happen. STOLDAL:
There was a hope. Now hope today tends to be in
the next five or six minutes. In those days hope could spread
over several months and a couple of years
and still have that hope, and that's what they had through
most of the 1920s: a hope. [old-time piano music] NARRATOR: Hope was
always about the future. And, in the early 1920s,
many of the modern marvels Las Vegans were hoping for,
were beginning to show up. HALL-PATTON: This was a town
where cars were coming in. STOLDAL: The Federal Government
was starting to build a highway from Los Angeles
all the way to Salt Lake City. It was a highway,
but it was the Arrowhead Trail. Literally they followed
Native American old routes from the 1800s. There were roads, dusty roads
with big grooves in them. And you could drive a car
between the two points. But they were terrible. HALL-PATTON: This was not
an area that was easy to use automobiles,
but they were coming in. Everybody wanted an automobile. [engine starts] [car horn honks] NARRATOR: Then, in May 1920,
a flying machine landed on a patch of naked dirt
in Las Vegas. It was as if the future
had dropped in on the tiny city in the desert. HALL-PATTON:
What's interesting is we didn't stop.
This wasn't just a one shot. "Oh wow.
A plane stopped here." Within a few months,
on Thanksgiving Day 1920, we opened an airport here. NARRATOR: Another amazing
new machine arrived in 1922. The Majestic Theater began
to offer a brand-new kind of entertainment: radio shows. [indistinct radio broadcast] The first ones were for
an audience. The movie theater would set up
a "radio phone" as it's called, and the community
would hear sports... In one case they heard
Herbert Hoover talking about the potential
of the dam. It was almost like
the Internet today, what impact it had
on the community. [indistinct radio broadcast] Within a couple of years
the radios had gotten smaller and gotten cheaper
and so pretty soon there were many households
in Las Vegas that had radios. NARRATOR: The modern age
was making an appearance in Las Vegas, but it was the
engine of the 19th century -- the railroad --
that ran the city. It always had. [♪♪♪] [dinner bell ringing] NYSTROM: The railroad
that founded Las Vegas was a venture of William
A. Clark and his family. The Union Pacific through a
series of accommodations wound up sort of owning half of it and
kind of bankrolling half of it. It was pretty clear
that the animating force behind the Salt Lake route was
Clark and Clark's interests. He was a tycoon
of substantial proportions. And by the early 1920s he was
toward the end of his life. STOLDAL: Senator Clark
decided that he was done with the railroad business,
and in 1921 he sold it to the Union Pacific. And they ran things
a little stricter. A little tighter.
Little more business-like, and immediately laid off between
60 and 100 people in Las Vegas. NYSTROM: That's the shift from
kind of a family-tycoon- distant-relative kind of thing,
to this sort of modern-managerial-capitalism
kind of thing. [train rumbling on track] NARRATOR: The relationship
between the railroad and its city soon
suffered a crippling blow. It would be called
the Strike of 1922. The trouble had been
brewing for years. During the First World War,
the federal government took control of all railroads -- and paid the workers
a reasonable wage. But after the war, railroad
operators were back in control and wages for the workers
were cut. Once in 1921. Then again, in June 1922. NYSTROM: The Harding
Administration was very aggressively pro-business. They announced a twelve percent
cut in wages for shop workers and this was across
the board, right. Not just in Las Vegas
but elsewhere. [train whistle] NARRATOR: On July 1st,
unions fired back. All over the country,
unions of railroad repairmen went on strike --
about 400,000 workers -- the largest work stoppage the
railroads had seen for 28 years. NYSTROM: In Las Vegas
unionized labor was big. So there was a real
measure of solidarity. NARRATOR: "The contest is on. At the stroke of ten o'clock
this morning a short blast of the shop
whistle announced that all efforts to avoid
the strike had been in vain. The men of the Union Pacific
here walked out quietly and soberly." Las Vegas Age. July 1st, 1922. NYSTROM: The workers in
the shops laid down their tools and walked out. All of the boilermakers,
all of the car men, all the blacksmiths. And that's a pretty
dramatic thing when you think about it, right? NARRATOR:
Clarence Ray: CLARENCE RAY: Nobody was making
any money. One day a guy came down and asked "Would you
be interested in working?" All of us said, "Yes!" He said, "You got to go
to Las Vegas. You'll make about
five dollars a day," which was real good pay
in 1922. So we left for Las Vegas
on the Union Pacific Railroad. But when we got here,
we found out there was a strike. The man didn't tell us he was
looking for strikebreakers! So I slipped out and caught
a bus back to Los Angeles. NYSTROM: The railroad
imported strike breakers. They brought these folks
from out of town. And the idea was that they would
live within the walls of the railroad stockade. The railroad actually had
a great big fence like a fort. [men chanting indistinctly] The first couple of weeks
were very optimistic. The strike seemed
to be going well. The city was incredibly
behind the strike. Even Sheriff Sam Gay,
he hired a few of the strikers as deputies to keep the peace. But really that was saying that
he was in support of the strike. - [♪♪♪]
- [steam engine hisses] NARRATOR: In other parts of
the country, violence broke out: company guards
fired at striking workers. At least ten people died. NYSTROM: In early August
the tensions get ratcheted up somewhat. One group of women beat up
a wife of a strike breaker. It was a wild moment. NARRATOR: Eighteen strikers
were arrested for trying to stop
strikebreakers from working. It becomes a very ugly
situation in Las Vegas. NARRATOR:
Unions of train drivers joined
the repairmen's strike. NYSTROM: The strikebreakers
living inside that fence were running out of food. They started to have
dwindling supplies. The strikers didn't know this. This was only revealed
afterwards in the telegrams, the private telegrams
of the railroad. NARRATOR: On August 8th,
Union Pacific lawyer, Frank McNamee Senior,
wrote Governor Emmet Boyle. Frank McNamee: FRANK MCNAMEE:
"A body of strikers, numbering from fifty to 100,
stopped our Train #20 at the west yards
at Las Vegas, and forcibly and brutally
beat up and dragged from the train five men
employed by the railroad... On the third day of August
our train master Zentmyer was tarred and feathered. Unless some steps
are taken immediately, there is a danger of a calamity
befalling Las Vegas in the way of loss of life..." The governor of
the state of Nevada has to come down to Las Vegas in
an effort to quiet the strike. The town is simmering. It seems like a moment
when something's really
going to happen. NARRATOR: But one night
a striker made a big mistake: he leveled a gun at
the governor himself. Governor Boyle pulled out
a revolver and disarmed the striker. Then he called in the
State Police to restore order. So that really is the moment
where the tide shifts. They had gotten awfully close. The strikers had had
the strikebreakers short on supplies, the
railroad officials panicking; the government
was not necessarily interested in intervening. NARRATOR: The strike
went quickly downhill. NYSTROM: The Union Pacific
made a couple of good moves. They just said anyone who wants
to work will get a pay raise. By the end of 1922,
if you were going to work for the railroad you would've
probably gone back to work. Many people did. NARRATOR: The strike was over,
but the bitterness was not. The railroad soon made
a critical decision: they would keep the Las Vegas
repair shops open, but make the operation
much smaller. They took a lot of jobs
out of Las Vegas. They moved them to Caliente. The drop in the number
of machinists in Las Vegas is precipitous. Those paychecks of those several
hundred workers stopped. So it was an awkward time
in Las Vegas. They were trying
to hurt the community. NARRATOR: The purpose for
the Union Pacific's decision was never certain. GREEN: Now the UP does say,
this is not really punishment. And to prove their general
decency they give the community a new tennis court
to make up for it. [♪♪♪] [men shouting indistinctly] There is a difference
between being a railroad town and being a town
with a railroad. And I think after the strike
that's when you see that change. [♪♪♪] [water splashes] NARRATOR: Even as
the strike was winding down, engineer Walker Young
was delivering his final report about the intended damsite
on the Colorado. None of the Boulder Canyon
sites would work. But Walker Young
had another idea. WALKER YOUNG: We thought
of Homer Hamlin's suggestion of a dam site about 20
miles below Boulder. We three got in a boat
and we sized Black Canyon up. When we were there,
we discovered a stake that was set by Homer
several years before. NARRATOR: Black Canyon
was more accessible and more solid
than Boulder Canyon. The canyon could bear
a heavier load. And Black Canyon had one
other crucial advantage. WALKER YOUNG:
I discovered it was possible to actually build a railroad
from Las Vegas to the top of the Black Canyon
dam site. We could get the resources,
millions of tons of materials, down to that dam site
on a standard gauge railroad. As I've said many times, the
Lord left that dam site there. It was only up to Man
to discover it and to use it. NARRATOR: In late 1922,
Herbert Hoover and the Colorado River
Commission met again. Pop Squires, and several
other boosters from Las Vegas, went to Santa Fe, New Mexico
where these representatives from the seven states
were meeting. "OK. We're going to build
a dam on the Colorado River." Pop Squire says yeah, great that's gonna be great
for Las Vegas and L.A. and the Imperial Valley
and everybody else. But how are we going
to divide the waters? California is going to get
most of it because it's California
and it's big and it's growing and it's always big
and growing and developing. Nevada gets 300,000 of those seven and a half
million acre feet. NARRATOR: But for C.P. Squires,
even this amount was a triumph. FLORENCE BOYER:
It was my father who insisted that in the distribution
of water Nevada be allowed
300,000 acre-feet. Nobody at that time thought
we'd have much use for it, but he insisted that it
be put into the compact. NARRATOR: In November 1922,
six states signed the Colorado River Compact. HALL-PATTON: You look at
the ‘20s in Las Vegas, "OK. We've got we've got
aviation coming in. Woohoo! We've got the Arrowhead Trail
Highway coming in and that getting improved.
Woohoo. We've got the strike against
the UP... ehh, not so good. The move of all the jobs
out of the rail yard... ehh, not so good." Then we get the Colorado
River Compact. Oh, that's a good one. Because the Colorado River
Compact means that something is going to finally
happen with the river. We're going to finally,
probably get a dam built. NARRATOR: Or would they? Congress was not yet convinced. In the spring of 1923,
40 congressmen came to Nevada. Murl Emery was enlisted
to ferry the visitors up and down the river. MCBRIDE: You talk about
Las Vegas entrepreneurs back in the day and
Murl Emery was probably one of the most colorful
and interesting of them. He made his living
river running. NARRATOR:
Murl Emery: MURL EMERY: We were
real busy at that time, because we were hauling
governors and senators and congressmen till they were
running out of our ears. MCBRIDE: And it didn't make any
difference to him who they were. They were just someone
that got in the boat. "Don't rock it. Don't fall
overboard. I won't save you." And he took them up and down
the river. NARRATOR: C.P. Squires soon
took the Las Vegas sales pitch to an even higher authority. C.P. SQUIRES:
One morning in Washington
I was given an interview with President
Calvin Coolidge. He was very pleasant and polite and allowed me to tell
the whole story. I was sure that I
had him completely convinced. I said, "Now, Mr. President,
isn't that a wonderful project?" expecting him to say,
"Why, yes, and I favor it." But I could get
no word from him as to whether he would
approve the bill or not. NARRATOR: Legislation
for a dam still continued to languish in Congress. Helen Stewart and the rest of
Las Vegas were still waiting. HELEN STEWART: Our Boulder
Canyon Dam Appropriation is delayed until next December
meeting of Congress. The wise ones will hold on
and wait with patience and make money. Oh Let IT Come Soon. - [♪♪♪]
- [film projector whirring] [car horn honks] NARRATOR: Very little seemed
to be happening in Washington, but the same was not true
of the small city in the Mojave desert. In the mid-twenties,
the Las Vegas Review described the state of the city --
and its future: "Las Vegas has five churches,
two large banks, two newspapers, electric
lighting and telephone systems, a good public library, and all the improvements
of a modern community. It is likely to become one of
the great cities of the West." The city was growing -- and as it did,
it went back to its roots. Even before the auction
that created the town in 1905, developer J. T. McWilliams
had created a settlement near the railroad. The area was now called
Old Las Vegas. In 1923, the city constructed
a new school here -- the Las Vegas
Grammar School, later known as
the Westside School. The next year, Helen Stewart
sold land near the school to Dr. Roy Martin and other
prominent Las Vegans. With visions of the coming
dam dancing in their heads, they created a subdivision. They called their project
"West Side," and the name would stick. "It should become
a choice residential section with the growth
of Las Vegas... It is a gratifying success... Nearly all the $100 lots
have been sold. The Las Vegas Age.
April 5th, 1924. Alice Doolittle,
a dental hygienist, recalled the mid-20s mood
in Las Vegas. ALICE DOOLITTLE:
Ed Von Tobel used to come up and have his teeth fixed,
and he said to me one day, "Mrs. Doolittle, buy some land." I said, "Where?" "Anywhere," he said, "North,
east, south or west -- just buy it." Las Vegas was going to become
the hub of a construction site, of building this massive dam
across the Colorado River. Entrepreneurial spirit
exploded in Las Vegas. "You got to get this land,
you've got to get in on
the ground floor of the Boulder Dam,
it's going to be a big deal, you're going to make
lots of money." NARRATOR: Helen Stewart
was still a believer. HELEN STEWART: Some rich men are
buying up all the land they can close in to Las Vegas. They are paying
from $25 to $35. $50, $100, $150, and $200 an acre. They are talking Boulder Canyon
Dam stronger than ever. NARRATOR: Helen Stewart,
once the quintessential
Las Vegas pioneer, was now called
"The First Lady of Las Vegas." But after all her years of hope, she would not live to see a dam
built near her beloved city. She would die in March, 1926 -- with Congress
still locked in debate. [♪♪♪] ['America the Beautiful'] NARRATOR: Demographically,
Las Vegas was still a typical Nevada town. Most residents were white,
of European descent. But not all. This was a more
diverse community than we tend to think about. NARRATOR:The African-American
community was tiny -- a group of some 50 people. The original ethnic group
was still here: a small band of Southern Paiutes
lived on a tiny reservation. Most of them were destitute; diseases brought in by white
people added to their distress. The largest minority population
was from the Asian community. Japanese. NARRATOR: Many Japanese
Americans were truck farmers. Bill Tomiyasu came to Vegas
in 1916, then married a "picture bride"
from Japan whom he'd never met. Together they raised a family and worked a farm
for over 50 years. HALL-PATTON: There was
a Mexican presence here. There was a black
presence here. NARRATOR: One African-American
was Clarence Ray, who had been brought in to help
break the railroad strike in 1922. CLARENCE RAY: In 1925 I just
moved back up here to stay. Blacks worked
in the railroad shops. They worked as machinists,
and electricians. Everybody had some kind of job. WHITE: Clarence Ray thought
the African-American community was very robust,
very successful. He saw all of the
businesses owned by blacks. RAY: Back in the 1920s,
blacks and whites in Las Vegas got along fine. We went to everything together, everyone went to school
together. We never had any trouble...
until later. WHITE: Clarence Ray
thought that there was harmony among African-Americans
and whites at the time. I don't know how much
of that is really true. NARRATOR: Not everyone in Las
Vegas was keen on integration. For decades, America had
seen massive immigration. Competition for jobs triggered
a national backlash -- especially the rebirth
of the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1920s, the group had
several million members -- or even more. WHITE: They were organizing
across the country. And one of the places that
they came to was Las Vegas. This is a group that yes they're
racially biased obviously. But at the same time the KKK
is targeting religious groups like members of
the Catholic Church, Jews. The KKK included 10 klaverns
in Nevada. WHITE: A lot of the railway
jobs are lost here and they're taken
to Caliente, Nevada. So, I think that brings about
a lot of tension; fewer jobs usually
brings out the worst in us. And we see that
with the Ku Klux Klan marching down Fremont Street
in full regalia. Frightening. But the African-American
community was appalled and the white community here in
Las Vegas promised that the Ku Klux Klan would not
become a part of this community. [old-time music] STOLDAL: Life in Las Vegas and
in the mid-twenties was magic. 1923 saw the beginning
of a significant change in the community
of Las Vegas, and that was because
of technology. NARRATOR: One of the
trailblazers was Bob Griffith. He'd moved to Las Vegas
as a kid, in 1905. Late in life he would say:
"I was lucky. As a boy, I came to Las Vegas
when the town was new; it raised me, and I
tried to raise it." HALL-PATTON:
Bob Griffith in 1925, he applied
to be the postmaster, and he got the job. NARRATOR: Griffith soon made a
very basic change in the system. Home delivery of mail. That's one of those things,
we take it so much for granted we don't even think about it.
Of course you get it at home! That's why you've got
a slot in the door. That's why we have
numbers on our houses. You didn't normally get that
in the early days. You always had to go
to the post office. Now, oh my goodness,
somebody is coming to the door. This is exciting! What am I going to get? HALL-PATTON: It says
something about a city. You've grown up. You're not just a dusty
little burg out in the middle
of nowhere anymore. NARRATOR: In 1926,
another vital innovation was sweeping across
America: airmail. The Post Office wanted to link
Los Angeles and Salt Lake City with a route that would stop
in Las Vegas -- if the city could provide
a suitable airfield. In theory, Las Vegas
did have an airport. But the airport
wasn't anything. So Bob Griffith got involved and
said "You know, that's great. Fine and dandy,
we got this airport, but you can't land there
because you've got tumbleweeds growing
in the runway." He actually ended up
scraping the runways and flattening them out and
getting the Boy Scouts involved to pick up broken glass and
bottles littering the runways, making it a functioning airport. [♪♪♪] And in April of 1926,
Western Air Express flies in to Las Vegas
for the first time. GREEN:
Think of it in the ‘20s. This is brand new. It isn't, you've seen one plane
you've seen them all. "I finally saw a plane!" This is big. And there's the mail
and let's distribute. STOLDAL: A letter from your
friend that could have been put in the mail early in the morning and you would get that
letter late in the afternoon. That was very special. GREEN: People come down there
to see the plane arrive. NARRATOR:
Las Vegas Review wrote: "The value of airmail to Las
Vegas cannot be overestimated. Las Vegas will be
the only regular stop on the new commercial airway,
which will place us definitely on the air map
of the country." [plane engine whirs] [spectators cheering] NARRATOR: Suddenly all kinds of
important people might drop in for a visit to Las Vegas. Even the great star of radio,
Will Rogers, might turn up -- or over. STOLDAL:
His plane landed in Las Vegas
and literally flipped over. He hung there in a safety
harness for for 15 or 20 minutes until somebody was able
to unhook him. - [glass shatters]
- [festive music] GREEN:
We have an airline stop. What comes next? Las Vegas began
to sort of wake up and say well wait a minute, we can plug ourselves into the
world outside. There's always something
new coming down the pike and so we've got to get
our hands on it and we've got to promote it and see what we can do
to make it work for us. GREEN: Las Vegans begin
to think of the possibilities of being a tourist town, and Lorenzi's part of that. - [bucolic music]
- [duck quacking] David Lorenzi was
a French immigrant, and he dug out a couple of
lakes, they became Twin Lakes. And what is now Lorenzi Park is
where his resort was located. MCBRIDE: Lorenzi's Resort
was a great big spring and they turned it into a place
where you could go and swim and sit under the trees. It was a little bit
out of town at the time. So it was like a little jaunt,
you could take a horse, you could take your buggy,
you can drive your flivver, you know, through
the sand out there. NARRATOR:
Twin Lakes staged beauty
pageants, dance contests... [water splashes] ...prizefights, horse races. Admission: one thin dime. GREEN: You might have up to
a thousand people showing up there for a big
community event, and there was a restaurant,
and there was dancing and there were bands playing. It's a resort and you can visit
and you can be a tourist there. NARRATOR: By the mid-twenties,
a man named J.W. Woodard had created special
accommodations for tourists to Las Vegas. [car horn honks] STOLDAL: J.W. Woodard
was really an entrepreneur. He was one of the first,
if not the first, automobile dealerships
in Las Vegas. He also saw the future. There was this new
sort of traveler -- not on the train,
they now had cars. And with cars
they needed garages, and they needed places to stay. He had cabins,
he had a garage. He had a grocery store
that had sandwiches. [cash register dings] The rooms had showers. The cars... you could drive
a car so it was covered from the sun or the cold
or the wind or the rain. Woodard was really the first
motel guy in Las Vegas. [♪♪♪] NARRATOR: The first motel
signaled the arrival of tourists in southern Nevada. And one day in early 1926,
a 50-piece band paraded through town, followed by no less than 300
men -- all carrying rifles. They'd come for
a trap-shooting event, and they were more than welcome. The Las Vegas Age wrote that
this is one of the largest delegations ever to visit
Las Vegas, so it is necessary for
the credit of the city that everything possible
be done to make the stay of the visitors pleasant. They were modernizing
the city and they were setting up
hospitals and the police, and all kinds of things
like that were going on. They began to pave the streets. Enough people had moved into
town that when you picked up the phone to talk to somebody, you could no longer give
just their name... Hello? You had to give their number because there were so many
people coming into town. NARRATOR: The center
of Las Vegas even began to light up with
a special glow: neon. The flashy element would soon
change the look of Las Vegas, and become
a stylistic trademark. The first neon sign was the
word "HOTEL" at the Overland. Immediately the battle
for bigger and brighter began, and neon flashed all over
Fremont Street -- at the Overland,
the Boulder Club, the Northern Club. In some of those places,
under new neon signs, you could still get a drink. [dramatic music] - [casino chips clack]
- [cards shuffling] NARRATOR: In the mid-twenties,
Las Vegas gambling clubs were still managing
to ignore Prohibition. There were no roulette wheels,
but card games were plentiful -- and legal. William German
was the mayor. STOLDAL: He campaigned in 1923
on a strict hard-nosed policy of he was going to find
a way to enforce Prohibition. And in essence he was going
to end gambling. [cards shuffling] NARRATOR: But German's efforts
to clean up the city were consistently blocked
by the City Commission. And then the laws changed... - [upbeat old-time music]
- [liquid pouring] And this would change Las Vegas. STOLDAL: You had two basic laws: you had the federal law
and you had the state law. Then in 1923
the Nevada government said, "No, we're abolishing
the Prohibition laws. There is no state Prohibition. "Nah nah nah, we don't
really want Prohibition." And so they repealed their
approval of the 18th Amendment. And that meant that it was
entirely up to the Feds to police Nevada
as far as Prohibition went. The local constabulary
would not do it. They didn't have to do it. STOLDAL: And the federal
government wasn't quite sure
how to enforce it. MCBRIDE: The Fed offices
were based in San Francisco. So by the time they decided
to raid a place it was known for like a week.
[laughing] So there's plenty of time
to clean things up and many times the Feds showed
up to knock over still and there was nothing there. STOLDAL: So Las Vegas was open. HALL-PATTON: The fact is
you've got guys making booze from Mesquite to... well, you know, anywhere along
the Colorado River, basically anywhere
that there's water. NARRATOR: Murl Emery ferried
people between Arizona and Nevada on his boat. MURL EMERY:
Whiskey was the deal. These bootleggers would come
down to the ferry, pretty well out in the open,
hollering it out, "Anybody on the other side?" So you'd haul a man across
with his load of whiskey. There were even
businessmen in Las Vegas who were bootlegging
on the side. HALL-PATTON: There were
stills all over the place here. There was a lot of booze here. NARRATOR: And Las Vegas
now saw something it had never seen before:
a gangster. Jim Ferguson was
a walking archetype -- a tough guy up to his neck
in bootlegging, bribery and violence. Because of him,
a young boy would die on the streets of Las Vegas. Ferguson is a boss of Las Vegas in ways that politicians
were not bosses and other economic factors
were not bosses. He is our corrupt
criminal boss of the 20s. NARRATOR: A ready target
awaited him: the Arizona Club, in Block 16. He came down to Las Vegas
and what he found was that Block 16 was pretty much
in the hands of the same people who'd been running it
for well over a decade. And this is an opportunity. STOLDAL: In 1925
Ferguson invaded, with his gang, The Arizona Club. He and his gang one night
beat everybody up. They had a big brawl. And Ferguson muscles in. Ferguson is now in charge
of the underworld. And he starts deciding who is
going to be selling whiskey and running prostitution. They're going to have
to pay him a fee. So he controlled everything. NARRATOR: That same year,
Mayor German again campaigned on a promise
to clean up the city. It wouldn't be easy --
the city had a police chief and two or three policemen. Even so, the Mayor hoped
to get rid of bootlegging. The mayor said "It's still bad
for our community. We're going to have
to tighten it." "These are laws,
we want to obey them." He wants to make sure
that Las Vegas is a good and growing community. There is certainly
in Las Vegas a contingent of people who feel
we should be obeying this law. This is a bad thing to do, to ignore a constitutional
amendment and a congressional enactment, but try to legislate morality,
it doesn't always work. In ‘25 when German
runs for re-election, his opponent is Fred Hesse and Hesse's attitude toward
Prohibition is more hands off. NARRATOR:
Fred Hesse: FRED HESSE: Much is being said
about the morals of our city. If I am elected there will
be no "lifting of the lid." The future of Las Vegas
lies in the observance of decency and sanity. Decency...
but a dose of sanity. The folks on the north side
of the street, the Block 16, they knew what sanity meant. "We're gonna have some 'live
and let live' rules in here." And he won. NARRATOR: For the first time,
a city mayor would serve a term of four years. But could Fred Hesse actually
get something done? When Hesse took over
as mayor of Las Vegas in 1925, city government was bankrupt. Streets were not being paved. The fire and police department
was in the red. He decided to fix that. They started to institute
stiff fines. GREEN: Ferguson ends up
working out a system, a protection racket,
where he works with members of the city police department. STOLDAL: They would bust
people on a regular basis. You know you're going
to get busted, you're going to come in
and pay your $300 fine, and go back to your business and
do whatever you needed to do. You're good for it
for a couple of months. That was a tremendous
moneymaker for Las Vegas. The city government
really liked this idea that they were getting revenue
from the bootleggers. Streets got paved. The city's accounting books
were in much better shape. GREEN:
The city is paving streets, improving the sewer lines,
all these other things. What's paying for them
is fees they're getting from people to have businesses
that do this or are paying fines
for being caught doing the things the city
is letting them do. NARRATOR: But in the late 1920s,
that system would change. Federal agents would
be coming to Vegas. And they would make big
problems for Big Jim Ferguson. [upbeat music] NARRATOR:
In 1928, the El Portal theater
opened on Fremont Street -- a beautiful Spanish-style venue
that could hold over 700 people. Their premiere film
was Ladies Of The Mob, which is so interesting
that that's the movie that they picked in 1929. Little did they know
a couple of decades later it would have
a little bit more meaning. GREEN:
The movie starred Clara Bow. Clara Bow was known as
the "IT" girl... [dramatic swell] ...and she epitomized
the 1920s flapper, the young woman who would dress
a little more provocatively, didn't necessarily
want to get married. She ends up in one of the
first major celebrity marriages in Las Vegas to a
cowboy actor named Rex Bell. - [♪♪♪]
- [horse snorts] They end up in years to come
getting their own ranch southeast of town. The "IT" girl, that's the first
film at the El Portal. - [old time music]
- [projector whirring] You're seeing the changes
that are going on in Hollywood, you're seeing the changes
in society but you're also seeing
the changes in Las Vegas. And sure enough Clara Bow
is going to be part of our life here. [camera shutter clicks] NARRATOR: This was the era
that marked the beginning of a lasting connection:
Las Vegas and glamour. In 1929, Hollywood stars
John Gilbert and Ina Claire decided to marry here. STOLDAL: They didn't
want to wait the three days it was required in California. So they came to Las Vegas,
a secret visit to Las Vegas that turned out
it wasn't all that secret. The marriage was a major
international story. She wound up a couple
of months later on the cover of Time magazine, and it also mentioned that
they were married in Las Vegas. For Las Vegas it was
another notch in its belt to become the place where
famous stars, famous people came to get married
and/or divorced. ['end of movie' music] [♪♪♪] NARRATOR: That same year, films
began coming to the El Portal that could do something
they'd never done before... Ah ha! I hope you like
these flowers... NARRATOR: They talked. Now, with sound motion pictures
and radios, the world could talk
to Las Vegas. And Las Vegas could
even talk to the world. The first long distance phone
call between Las Vegas and the outside world
connected the San Francisco and Las Vegas
Chambers of Commerce. San Francisco told Las Vegas: P.J. FAY: "The eyes of the world
are upon you and you are to be congratulated
upon the inauguration of this important link,
the absence of which has heretofore
isolated an important city." We're now part of the world. GREEN: And Las Vegas in 1929
suddenly has a daily newspaper. That's a sign in the late '20s
Las Vegas is headed places. It was radio. It was long
distance telephone calls. It was daily air mails. It was delivery to your door. And and it was talkies. HALL-PATTON:
Aviation, automobiles. We have movies coming here, we've got movies
being made here. Every day you would
read the newspaper and something new
was going on. It was a magic time. [♪♪♪] [camera shutter clicks] HALL-PATTON:
We're seeing ourselves
not as pioneers anymore. We are not a little, dirty,
dusty, desert town anymore. This is a growing city. This is a place that people
have set down roots. This is their home. This is their city. [film projector whirs] [♪♪♪] [film flaps on reel] [♪♪♪] NARRATOR: Yes: the on-again,
off-again dam project was now on again! In 1928, the Boulder Canyon
Project bill finally came before Congress. However, the proposed
damsite was not, in fact, in Boulder Canyon. The Bureau of Reclamation
looks at locations and they pick one
in Black Canyon. But because they called it
the Boulder Canyon Project Act, it would be considered
Boulder Dam. NARRATOR: Las Vegas held
its collective breath as Arizona's two senators began
to filibuster the measure. A melee broke out
on the Senate floor, with fists cocked
and tempers raging. Then the Senate adjourned
for the summer. [gavel raps] Another delay! Finally, in December 1928,
the Senate passed the measure. But even now, nothing was sure. "The danger to the Boulder
Canyon bill is the White House," the New York Times wrote. Would Coolidge sign it? It didn't seem likely. Calvin Coolidge: CALVIN COOLIDGE: I am a good
deal disturbed by the number of proposals that are being made
for an expenditure of money... The Boulder Dam bill. I think the lowest estimates
on that are $125 million. I don't know just what
will happen to the Treasury. As private enterprise
can very well fill this field, there is no need for
the Government to go into it. NARRATOR: But just three weeks
later -- without explanation -- Calvin Coolidge signed it, MCBRIDE:
President Coolidge signed
the Boulder Canyon project into law on December 21st, 1928. [applause] And Las Vegas
absolutely busted out. They had bands playing. They had a parade
went down Fremont Street. There's lots of photographs of
it, all of them with their horns and their drums
and they were pounding and everybody just celebrated. [cymbals crash] NARRATOR: People in Las Vegas
would always remember the day. Leon Rockwell: LEON ROCKWELL: We got
the fire truck out, and my God, everybody that could
hooked onto it! In carts and baby buggies
and everything else -- just like they was nuts. There was people that got lit that never had taken
a drink before. NARRATOR:
Dean Pulsipher: DEAN PULSIPHER: Everybody in
Las Vegas was out celebrating until the wee hours of the
morning, and I was one of them. I was out there celebrating
until I had to go to work. That was the making
of Las Vegas. That made the West here. Now we know that there is
going to be a dam constructed right here in the area. That is what Southern Nevadans
are excited about. There is money
to be made in this. There are people who are going
to come in here and spend money and there is going to be
some action in Las Vegas. NARRATOR:
Land values soared, population jumped,
and construction skyrocketed. Sleepy real estate offices
suddenly became madhouses. Everybody's got
their own dreams, everybody's got their own ideas of how this is going
to affect the community. [soft, dramatic music] It was going to become
something huge. NARRATOR: The dam
would be a colossus -- twice as tall as any
other dam on earth. It would take years to build. Its reservoir would inundate
227 square miles of valley. Its funding came from
one of the largest single appropriations bills
Congress had ever enacted. For the first time in history, a
major player in the development of Las Vegas had suddenly
stepped onto the scene: the federal government. But a few months later,
the Mayor of Las Vegas and its police chief
were not celebrating. [ominous music] Until 1928, Jim Ferguson's
system of kickbacks still worked perfectly. STOLDAL: City government
really liked this idea that they were getting revenue
from the bootleggers. [coin clangs] The money wasn't going
into the mayor's pocket. The money wasn't going into
the police chief's pocket. It was going to fund
city government. So bootleggers... they could have their stills and
come in town and sell alcohol. But they had to give
Ferguson some money. If you didn't pay Ferguson
the fee you would get busted
all the time. [police siren wails] GREEN: One of the bootleggers
who was supposed to pay protection was a guy
named Charlie Bradshaw. STOLDAL:
He stopped paying Ferguson. And Bradshaw started to get
arrested on a regular basis, more often than any of the other
bootleggers in town. And that changed everything. Charlie Bradshaw is making a
regular delivery with his wife. Son's in the backseat. He's driving --
it's a dirt road. Police Chief Spud Lake
spots Bradshaw. Starts chasing him. The special deputy gets out
on the running board of the car and fires three shots
at the tires of the car. [gunshots] The car bumps. The guy still takes a shot and it goes into
the back window of the car. It was at that moment that
Bradshaw's 8-year-old son looks out to see
what's going on and the bullet hits him straight
in the head, kills him. [low, sad music] The police chief, Spud Lake, and his deputy were both
charged with murder. With manslaughter. But the jury found them
not guilty because they weren't
quite sure about the shot. Where it had come from,
how it occurred. And more importantly they felt
it was Charlie Bradshaw's fault that his son had died because
he had taken his family out on a delivery
of bootleg whiskey. NARRATOR: But Bradshaw
would have his revenge. STOLDAL: Bradshaw said,
"Ferguson is the bad guy here. And I'm gonna tell you what. You go into his house,
you go into his basement, and you are going
to find everything." Across the street
from the Arizona Club they found hundreds
of gallons of whiskey. NARRATOR: The Feds
busted Ferguson. Within months, they also
arrested Mayor Fred Hesse and Spud Lake for conspiracy
to violate the Volstead Act. The trials both took place
in 1929. Federal court... a judge said there's not enough
evidence to hold the mayor. Not enough evidence
to hold the police chief. Let them go. They get off. But Ferguson
will end up going to prison. - MAN: Guilty!
- [crowd clamors] STOLDAL: Found guilty of all
the charges of violating the federal Prohibition laws,
and was sent to jail. He will come back
and try to take over again. Doesn't really succeed. Eventually disappears
from the scene. But what we're seeing here
is kind of... Think of Capone and company
in Chicago, and the St. Valentine's Day
Massacre. This is the miniaturized Las
Vegas version of these things, and the community is well
aware of what's going on. It's a form of organized crime and he's an organized
crime boss. NARRATOR: No one knows
when Jim Ferguson died. His death was never mentioned
in the newspapers of the city where he had been the king
of the bootleggers. [water flowing] [lively ragtime music] NARRATOR: Like no other year
in the history of Las Vegas, 1929 would completely transform
the small city in the desert. The coming dam had
people dreaming big. STOLDAL: People moved
to Las Vegas by the hundreds and quickly by the thousands
looking for jobs, looking for opportunities. And the town was wide open. Of course then
the big question was "Where are you going
to put the workers? How much of the money are
we going to be able to get
into Las Vegas?" NARRATOR: Maybe the city
would be the headquarters of the project: thousands of
workers would swarm in. Housing would boom. HALL-PATTON: As soon as
the word comes that this is going to happen people
start showing up here for jobs. Secretary of the Interior
Ray Lyman Wilbur came out to do
a reconnoiter. They were going to size up
Las Vegas and they were going to go out
to the dam site and have a look around and
then they were going to decide what they were going to do. Las Vegas wanted to polish
its shoes and wash its face and make as good an impression
as they could. They built a great big welcome
arch over Fremont Street that you could see
as soon as you came out of the railroad station. NARRATOR: Las Vegas
went to great measures to secure Secretary Wilbur's
good opinion. You know, that was the first
time we actually got around to closing up
all the bars on Block 16. [♪♪♪] NARRATOR: The government
would build a whole new town for the construction workers -- "Boulder City,"
it would be called. Very likely, Wilbur's decision
came from simple geography: Las Vegas was just too far away
from the dam in Black Canyon. It may have been another
disappointment for the city, but in 1929, there was
no stopping Las Vegas. That October we have
the crash in New York and this is considered the
onset of the Great Depression. In Las Vegas they know that
construction of the dam is coming. There are discussions
going on about reducing the residency
requirement for divorce, about allowing casino gambling, and Las Vegas
is getting ready to boom. NARRATOR: There would be
no depression in Las Vegas. On the contrary. [festive music] MCBRIDE: You had businesses
opening right and left all through the late 1920s
and early 1930s. NARRATOR: On New Year's Day
of 1930, the Las Vegas Review-Journal
wrote: "We believe that Las Vegas today
stands on the very threshold of unparalleled development. She is to emerge the metropolis
of the state of Nevada." That same year,
Secretary Wilbur would return. As newsreel cameras whirred, he would drive a silver spike
into the railroad tracks. The act signified the completion
of a rail line to the future site
of Boulder City. But what the ceremony
was really doing was celebrating another kind
of connection: the one between Las Vegas
and the future. After years of
dashed expectations, big dreams had come true. Everybody is thinking about
the dam. You know this is what
they're thinking about. This is going to transform
Las Vegas. This was going to come in and was going to transform
this city into... We didn't know what, but
we knew it was going to
transform the city. NARRATOR: Las Vegas was growing,
and it would continue to grow. Just 25 years after a railroad
company auctioned off lots of dust and sand in the desert, a city had developed,
survived, and thrived. MCBRIDE: These original
pioneers who came out to establish Las Vegas
as this outpost, this ranch in the middle
of one of the hottest, most inhospitable
deserts in the country... did what they did which then
allowed the next generation to come up and turn Las Vegas
into a real-life city. NARRATOR: The small town,
long dependent on the railroad, needed to find another way
to survive. By 1930, it had found one. The Hoover Dam was coming. With it would come a city
that no one in the world could possibly imagine. - [triumphant music]
- [applause] Las Vegas had suddenly become
a 24-hours-a-day boomtown -- and it was a boom
that would never quite end. [♪♪♪] [♪♪♪] [♪♪♪] [water splashes] [dinner bell rings] [♪♪♪]
