What Was Las Vegas Like in the 1930s?

I was fascinated by your QoD on Pop Squires. From the comments, it appears other readers were too. One thing caught my fancy, when he wrote in an editorial that Las Vegas needed a good winter hotel-resort. I started trying to imagine what Las Vegas was like when Pop Squires wrote that. Your writers are so good with history. Can you provide a description?

Thank you for the compliment about our resident historians, but it's a pretty tall order to describe an entire decade in a QoD (or even two or three).

Luckily, the Commission for the Las Vegas Centennial sponsors videos on Las Vegas decade by decade.

They're released on May 15 every year to celebrate the founding of the city and four have been produced so far: "The City of Las Vegas: The Early Years Part 1" and "Part Two," "The Thirties," and "The Forties." These are extremely well-done and worth watching, with 75 minutes or so worth of photographs, moving pictures, and newsreel footage, well-written narration, and interviews with local historians.

We highly recommend them all, but for the purposes of this answer, as you watch "The Thirties," you'll learn everything you want to know about that decade: the Great Depression and the building of Hoover Dam, the launch of wide-open gambling, the Apache Hotel, race issues at the time, the first city boosters, the incipient wedding industry, and much more.

Here, however, we'd like to quote a description of Las Vegas from those days that has always amazed and amused us.

It comes from a book that was published in 1940, Nevada -- A Guide to the Silver State, a travel book produced by the Federal Writers' Project, one of the Depression-era's Work Projects Administration programs. The Writers' Project released guides that went into deep detail about all 48 states, plus Alaska, in the late 1930s. The following is an overview of Las Vegas then, as penned by one of the WPA writers.

"Las Vegas is developing into one of the chief travel and recreation centers of the Southwest, in part as a result of the completion of Hoover Dam. A sound and far-sighted public policy has taken advantage of national interest in the dam to make the city and the area around it attractive enough to bring visitors back repeatedly. Public buildings and houses are under construction all over town. The rows of catalpas and poplars planted during the early days are being protected and lengthened. Relatively little emphasis is placed on the gambling clubs and much effort is being made to build up cultural attractions. No cheap and easily parodied slogans have been adopted to publicize the city; no attempt has been made to introduce pseudo-romantic architectural themes or to give artificial glamour or gaiety. Las Vegas is itself, natural, and therefore very appealing to people with a wide variety of interests."

Right! Exactly as it remains today.

No part of this answer may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher.

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Comments

Dave_Miller_DJTB Sep-05-2022

Exactly as it remains today.

Gotta love that tongue in cheek summary. Well done.

Kevin Lewis Sep-05-2022

Not an actual city back then

"Sin City," for the first 5-6 decades of the gambling Era, was never an actual city. It was a couple of piles of casinos surrounded by cheap and cruddy housing where the worker bees lived, interspersed with the estates and mansions of the bosses. Then, rather suddenly, gambling became "respectable." In the blink of an eye, Vegas had paved sidewalks and parks and schools and indoor plumbing. It was fascinating to see how Vegas struggled with the overdue transition from a glorified company town run by grifters to an actual modern city run by grifters.

rocks2oldies Sep-05-2022

Circus A Circus

My first experience was when I was 17 and Circus Circus just opened.  The old slot machines and the flying trapeze artists above me.  Never had I ever seen anything like it, but it was fun!  Then time took it's toll and the kids came.  Well...I agree with Kevin Lewis's statement on here.  I miss the old Vegas.

Sandra Ritter Sep-05-2022

In my opinion

It should have been named Squires International Airport.

Pat Higgins Sep-05-2022

Big tex

My first visit to Vegas was a whirl wind car trip from Central Texas through the southwest states to California and back home.  I was 11 years old.  The year was in the summer 1953 & included a brief stop in Vegas with my mother, older brother, older sister, younger sister.  I only remember how dirty and dusty everything was   As kids we were not allowed in the casinos—only the hotel where a bunch very dirty grungy guys were hanging around out outside with probably less than 5 nickels between.  Some lady gave them some change which they put in slot machines and lost their money.  Just a pathetic situation.

Jerome Sinkovec Sep-05-2022

Teamsters Casinos

My dad was a truck driver in Wisconsin and a member of the Teamsters Union. When we went to Las Vegas, he would comment that the Teamsters put up the money for the casinos he saw. Which casinos were financed by the Teamsters, and are any of those still running, or have they all been demolished?

Ray Sep-05-2022

Good day for stories

 Holiday time...good weekend for old time stories (sorry, not about the 30's. I'm not old enough). I collect old road maps and my oldest Nevada map has city map inserts. It's from the early 50's and shows the city ending at Charleston. There is no "strip" insert map. It also has population figures and Reno had more people than Las Vegas. My 1st personal experience with Vegas was in 1959 on our way to Disneyland. We stayed in Mesquite the night before (the had no casinos) and there was 1 slot machine in the motel lobby for my parents to play (briefly). When we reached Vegas the next morning, my brother, cousin and I were dropped off at a movie downtown. I don't think I even remember a "strip" although I'm sure we had to drive down it to get to California (unless Boulder Highway was the route). I won't bore all of you with my 1st "real" trip in 1970 when I was 22 until the next story day when I stayed on the strip at the Castaways.

Question of the Day - 05 September 2022

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