Now there’s a good question! Plans for a Las Vegas Ferris or "observation" wheel have been on and off the drawing board for several years now, since London and Paris sparked renewed interest in the concept with their respective London Eye and Le Grand Roue millennium wheels. At the beginning of 2003, Clark County commissioners approved plans for a $100 million 560-foot-high Ferris wheel as part of a hotel-timeshare project to be built on the site of the former Wet 'n' Wild water park, just south of the Sahara. The project was a joint venture between Sahara Las Vegas Corp. (a subsidiary of Archon Corp.) and Voyager Entertainment International, also based in Las Vegas.
In December of that year, it was announced that Voyager was no longer working with Archon and, according to an article in the Las Vegas Sun, was "pursuing another giant Ferris wheel project at a more appealing site in Las Vegas." That turned out to be the Rio, but by May 2004, word on the street was that the Rio had pulled out of the deal.
Fast-forward to Sept. 27, 2005, when Voyager issued yet another press release, announcing yet another "exciting new Las Vegas Strip location" and that the company had reached an agreement with Centex Destination Properties, purchasers of the Westward Ho, to build the "world’s largest observation wheel" as part of the redevelopment of the former hotel-casino site. If you visit Voyager’s Web site at www.voyager-ent.com/news/092705.html, you can view an impressive graphic representation of what this long-awaited venture is supposed to look like.
But when we attempted to contact the company for a project update, our emails went unanswered. And when we finally spoke to a person and asked what was going on, we were informed: "We can't give you that information right now." Call us cynical, but we're not holding our breath about this one ever getting off the drawing board.
However, there has been a more recent development on the Ferris front, namely an announcement earlier this year by the New Frontier that the latest plans for the redevelopment of their site consist of plans for a 62-story 2,057-room hotel tower, a 90,000-square-foot casino, a performing-arts theater -- and a 485-foot Ferris wheel, with 32 capsules that could fit 25 passengers each. A call to the property confirmed that the plans had won approval from Clark County in February, but that it was still not yet 100% certain whether the plan would go ahead. We were told we'd be kept in the loop, however, so watch this space for the latest about a decision one way or the other, which we understand should be forthcoming in the not-too-distant future.
On a historic note, the Ferris wheel was invented by one George Ferris Jr., whose roots are planted firmly in Nevada. George Ferris Sr. was an Illinois rancher and dairyman who migrated west in 1864. He bought a ranch in Carson Valley near present-day Minden and the story goes that George Jr.’s inspiration for the Ferris wheel derived from his fascination with a large water wheel that turned under a bridge on the Carson River; he no doubt imagined what it would be like to ride around the wheel in one of the buckets.
After five years on the ranch, the Ferris family moved to Carson City, where George Sr. went into the landscaping business. Ferris landscaped much of Carson City in the 1870s; he planted the blue spruce that still serves as the state Christmas tree in 1876. The Ferris house, as well, still stands at the southeast corner of Third and Division streets.
George Jr. left Nevada to attend a military academy in Oakland when he was 16, later graduating from Rensselear Polytechnic School in Troy, New York, with a degree in civil engineering. He went on to design bridges, tunnels, and trestles all around the northeast.
In 1892, he convinced the sponsors of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago to allow him to ere
