Question of the Day 2017-05-22

I wonder about why Sands Ave. becomes Spring Mountain at Las Vegas Blvd. and Twain at Paradise. Which came first? Spring Mountain, Twain, or Sands? If it was originally Spring Mountain or Twain when the Sands was built, ok, I get that. But if it was originally Sands (like Tropicana and Flamingo, named after adjacent hotel/casinos), why change to Spring Mountain on the west and Twain on the east?

What generally happened in Las Vegas when street names change unexpectedly is that the original street dead-ended at the desert for a bit, then continued on the other side with a new name. Eventually, the streets merged, but the names didn’t.

In this case, the road definitely started out as Sands Avenue, named after the casino on the corner with the Strip (the same, as you point out, as Sahara, Flamingo, and Tropicana), then probably dead-ended to the east at Paradise Road.

At some point, Twain continued east and the two streets came together. But it gets a little tricky, because Sands Avenue makes a little dogleg to the south before it hooks up to Twain, which also indicates (to us, anyway) that they were probably two separate streets to begin with.

As for Spring Mountain, old maps of Las Vegas show that there wasn’t a road west from the intersection when the Sands was built in the early 1950s. At that time, the Strip was barely 10 years old and there was very little development on either side of what was then called Highway 91, though housing was starting to be built to the east. People who worked on the Strip wanted to drive west in the morning, with the sun at their backs, and east in the evening, with the sun at their backs. That’s why east of the Strip is the older and more congested side.

So when the street to the west of the Sands was laid out and graded, it wasn’t automatically thought of as an extension of Sands Avenue, which only traveled a couple of long blocks to Paradise Rd. anyway, where it turned into Twain. (Twain, incidentally, started back up on the west side of the Strip, south of Sands Avenue/Spring Mountain; if you draw a straight line from East Twain to West Twain, the twain shall meet.)

When it came time to name the western extension of Sands Avenue, any number of reasons, most probably having to do with the hotel-casino, might’ve caused the Highway Department to opt for Spring Mountain Road. Maybe the namer was jilted by a Copa Room showgirl. Maybe he was accosted by Sinatra or insulted by Rickles. Maybe he didn’t like the round shape of the Sands tower, being a linear kinda guy. Maybe he wanted to end the tradition of naming streets after casinos. Maybe he just liked the Spring Mountains.

Anyway, this is what we’ve pieced together by looking at old maps of Las Vegas. If anyone has more information about these street names, we welcome it.

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Jeff May-29-2017

D 4 C Road

Chiming in just a little late here with a couple details.

A 1950 map shows Twain, though it wasn't much of a real street, predating Sands by a couple years.  It was originally the southernmost street of what seems to have been a proposed neighborhood development behind the Desert Inn. This area became Desert Inn (now Wynn) golf course. That short section of Twain was re-named Sands Ave later on.

On the west side, when Spring Mountain Road shows up west of the tracks in the mid-50s, a 1957 map shows a zig-zag connection with the strip via "D 4 C Road," which likely led to Hoot Gibson's D-4-C Ranch, located approximately between present-day W Spring Mountain Rd and W Twain.

Question of the Day - 22 May 2017

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