As we covered in a previous QoD (4/21/05), the very first "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign was actually erected over Fremont Street in the 1920s. The iconic '50s sign on the southern end of the Strip, however, was the brainchild of Ted Rogich, father of Sig Rogich, one of the "Rs" in the big Nevada advertisting and marketing company R&R, who also served as an ambassador to his native Iceland, was a senior assistant to former President George H.W. Bush, and was the national advertising director for President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign. Ted Rogich was working as a salesman for an outfit called the Western Neon Co. when he dreamed up the sign. Designed by local graphic artist and typographer Betty Willis, it was sold to Clark County for $4,000 and erected in 1959. The fact that the design was never copyrighted accounts for the fact that it's been reproduced in myriad media ever since.
It's currently owned by the Young Electric Sign Co. (YESCO), which has been responsible for many of the neon displays around town, and now leases it to Clark County.
To our knowledge, the sign, which has been featured in practically every movie and TV show/documentary about Las Vegas since it debuted, has never been involved in a crime incident or accident, which is something of a miracle, considering how many vehicles pass it on a daily basis and how poor most of the driving in Las Vegas is.
The only hiccup we're aware of occurred on October 4, 1999, when the sign went dark for about a month after someone omitted to pay the electric bill. Once the problem was discovered, payment of the past-due amount, which amounted to less than $60, was made and power was turned back on.
In the spring of 2007 it was announced that the bulbs from the sign would be removed and offered for sale as souvenirs, with customers able to have their chosen, serial-numbered bulb delivered in a commemorative box with a certificate of authenticity (you can reserve a bulb in advance, if you have a special day coming up and want to know that your light was on the sign the day you got married or turned 21, for example).
Since the lowest cost for one of these official bulbs is $39* (going up to $99 for the "#1 bulb" in the display), we imagined that this might've generated some incentive to steal them, but a call to Russell Millar, the very helpful president of OfficialVegasLight.com, confirmed that he'd never heard of any such incident (it's a good 15-or-so feet up to reach the lower edge of the sign).
Russell explained that he's a third-generation Las Vegan whose grandfather arrived here to work on the Hoover Dam and that it's his personal mission to safeguard the future of the "Welcome" sign, one of the few remaining authentic bits of Las Vegas history. Although we've written about the sign on more than one previous occasion, he gave us the odd tidbit that we didn't know about before. One such nugget was the fact that the sign was originally located closer to the Sahara hotel, when that marked the outer limits of the city. As Las Vegas mushroomed south along the Strip, the sign was moved once more to the outskirts.
Now the city's expansion has caught up with it again and, apparently, there was talk of moving it farther out along I-15, but its current location has come to be almost as iconic as the sign itself, and that that plan's been scratched. Indeed, in an attempt to make it a little easier to take that classic snapshot, a parking lot is being built near the sign, which should be open by the time you read this and will remove the necessity of taking your life in your hands crossing the Strip.
Another interesting little factoid is that, although the sign is owned by YESCO, which supplies the bulbs to Mr. Millar's operation, the electric bill is actually paid by the City of Las Vegas, although the sign's located on Clark County land.
