The first "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign was an archway erected over Fremont Street in the 1920s as a welcome symbol for the then-Secretary of the Interior, who was visiting Las Vegas during the early surveys of the Hoover Dam. It remained in place for almost a decade.
The iconic sign on the southern Strip, however, with its almost equally famous "Drive Carefully, Come Back Soon" reverse message, was the brainchild of Ted Rogich (father of Sig Rogich), now 84. Back in the mid-'50s when he had the idea, Rogich was employed as a salesman for a small Las Vegas outfit called the Western Neon Company. His idea was realized by his colleague, local designer and typographer Betty Willis, now also in her eighties.
"That sign was the result of an all-night bull session in which one of the first drawings was retrieved from the wastebasket," the candid Willis revealed in a 2005 interview for the Scotsman."Everything you could flash or spin, we did it. We thought the city was fabulous, so we added the word." As she recalled in an earlier interview, back in 2002, "I wanted to create something that people would remember, so I tipped the square on its side and curved the ends. The lettering and everything about the sign went against the designs of that time." For some technical facts and figures, visit UNLV's Neon Survey site, a comprehensive study of all things neon in Las Vegas.
The sign, which has been featured in just about every movie and TV show ever set in Las Vegas, was sold to Clark County for $4,000 and erected in 1959, but the design was never copyrighted. As a result, the famous image now graces everything from T-shirts and fridge magnets to belt buckles and Nevada license plates. Heck, we even borrowed it for the LVA Web site logo! You can also buy a couple of battery-operated desktop versions that retail in the $30-$40 range. In 2002 Oscar Goodman had a "Welcome to Fabulous Downtown Las Vegas" version installed at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard S. and 4th Street. While in July 2005 it was announced that the LVCVA was paying for another "Welcome" sign, this time destined for the median on Boulder Highway somewhere near Cannery East, which the LVCVA will donate to Clark County as part of the Boulder Highway Beautification Plan.
As Willis, who doesn't earn a cent from her famous design, observes: "When a logo is successful, people remember it. It's a pretty good job that sign has done."
Photographs courtesy of Las Vegas News Bureau and YESCO.
