Las Vegas

“ Since we live in an age of corruption, almost like the declining days of ancient Rome, with the “interests” digging in deeper all the time, I ought not have been surprised at a campaign to build another Las Vegas right in the heart of our community. The plan was to incorporate a separate little city made up of the Sunset Strip, with its night clubs like Dino’s and Jerry Lewis’ new place, and stretching from Santa Monica Boulevard up into the hills. ”

“ I saw much of their life, and was so attracted by it that the sheep proposition was finally abandoned as unsuitable. Still, I was very undecided, knew little of the ways of the country and still less of the cattle business. I moved to the small town of Las Vegas, then about the western end of the Santa Fé railroad. Here I stayed six months, making acquaintances and listening to others' experiences.
Las Vegas was then a true frontier town. It was "booming," full of life and all kinds of people, money plentiful, saloons, gambling-dens and dance-halls "wide open." ”

“ Las Vegas is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé railway, and is its division headquarters in New Mexico. The city lies in a valley at the foot of the main range of the Rocky Mountains, and is about 6400 ft. above the sea. There are high peaks to the W. and within a short distance of the city much beautiful mountain scenery, especially along the “Scenic Route,” a highway from Las Vegas to Santa Fé, traversing the Las Vegas canyon and the Pecos Valley forest reserve. The country E. of the city consists of level plains. ”

“ Las Vegas lies in the centre of an extensive grazing region, has large stockyards and annually ships great quantities of wool. Three of the local newspapers are published in Spanish. Las Vegas was founded in 1835, under the government of the Mexican Republic. On the 15th of August 1846, during the war between Mexico and the United States, Gen. Stephen W. Kearny entered the town, and its alcalde took the oath of allegiance to the United States. There was but little progress or development until the arrival of the railway in 1879. ”

“ Las Vegas is a somewhat straggling village of perhaps about two thousand people, situated in a depression or valley in the hills, which to the northeast expand into a most fertile and agreeable plain, highly cultivated along the west side. Most inviting fields of barley and corn had remained untouched, though the horses of our troops had subsisted on the former. Jalapa to El Soldado, seven miles; to La Hoya, three miles (large) ; to tank on left, nine miles; to Las Vegas, three miles; Jalapa to Las Vegas, twenty-two miles. ”

“ Wherefore Las Vegas guessed harder than ever until men less hurried arrived from the banquet hall and told just what had happened. Immediately thereafter, every man who owned a car cranked up and got going in the direction of Black Canyon. ”

“ There is nothing here; in fact, if we had not had explicit directions from a railroad man we wouldn’t have found the well. We lunched, and then at 4 P. M., having found some bunch grass, we camped and turned the horses loose.
We are glad we did not stay at Las Vegas any longer. It may be cooler there now, but we know it is here, and we are happy. Dixie still holds out, so have not tried Kate in harness yet. We are in a bare mountainous country of the same desert variety which we have been traveling through for so long, but in spots the trail is good and in others it is bad. ”

“ Having put our horses and wagon in a corral, we began to make inquiries regarding the road to Las Vegas, Nevada, but could get no definite information. We were told we could not cross the desert directly, but would have to go around the south end. This meant going in a circle and, as the line we had drawn on the map went straight, we declined to go around, and were conferring with some old prospectors on the feasibility of crossing the desert when we heard of a man who had just come in from Las Vegas. ”

“ THE HERMIT PRIEST. The tourist en route to the Pacific coast cannot fail observing on his right a huge, relatively isolated peak, cutting the incomparably clear mid-continent sky, almost immediately after the train emerges from the picturesque cañon of El Moro, and commences to descend the long gradual slope to [25] the quaint old Mexican village of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Its scarred and verdureless front looms up grandly in the beautifully serrated landscape, of which it is the most conspicuous object. ”

“ But what cared I for rain or mud? By now surely I was proof against them. I struggled on. And ultimately I got there.
[Pg 139]
Las Vegas is a fair-sized town. In order of merit it is the second largest in New Mexico. The first is Albuquerque and the third is the capital, Santa Fé. There are no more towns of any size in New Mexico. Including native Indian villages there are, in addition, in the whole of New Mexico, some seventy or eighty small towns and very small villages, making the total population of the whole State about 50,000. ”

“ On a late map of the section that was lost by Arizona to Nevada, today are noted only the settlements of Bunkerville, Moapa, Logan, St. Joseph, Mesquite, Overton and St. Thomas. There is a ferry at Rioville, at the mouth of the Virgin, and another is at Grand Wash. The name of Las Vegas is borne by a railroad station on the Salt Lake and Los Angeles line, a few miles from the Springs. There are the mining camps of Pahrump, Manse, Keystone, El Dorado and Newberry. ”

“ Malone muttered, heaved a great sigh, and started for the suitcase and the door.
VIII
The Great Universal was not the tops in every field. Not by a long shot. As Las Vegas resorts went, as a matter of fact, almost any of them could outdo the Great Universal in one respect or another. The Golden Palace, for instance, had much gaudier gaming rooms. The Moonbeam had a louder orchestra. The Barbary Coast and the Ringing Welkin both had more slot machines, and it was undeniable that the Flower of the West had fatter and pinker dancing girls. ”

“ He was having a moment with his conscience; one of the consequences of the early ride; or it may have been the unavoidable aftermath of Baker's whisky, which had been not only abundant but vile.
He recalled how he had come to Las Vegas, a raw lad of twenty. He saw himself as he was then, lank and wondering, with factory bleached skin. He had come West to make his fortune. When that was accomplished he was to return and settle down in the old home where his godly forefathers had dwelt since Pilgrim times, self-respecting and respected. ”

“ Reality Annotation:This fictionalized story of a journalist's trip to Las Vegas on a variety of uppers, downers, and hallucinogenics provides a distortion screen on which the bizarre world of gamblers and tourists is projected with impressively vivid literary technique. ”

“ The third desert, 40 miles broad, leads to a post established for the protection of emigrants, and called Bitter or Bidder's Springs, 115 miles from Las Vegas. The next stage of 35 is to the Indian River, a tributary of the Colorado, whence there is another military establishment: the land is now Californian. Thence following and crossing the course of the stream, the traveler sights the Sierra Nevada. After 50 miles down the Mohave Kanyon is San Bernardino, once a thriving Mormon settlement, 90 miles from San Pedro and 120 from San Diego, where water conveyance is found to San Francisco. ”

“ About the earliest American occupation of the southern Nevada point available in the records upon which this office has worked, appears to have been the detail by Brigham Young in 1854 of a party of thirty young men "to go to Las Vegas, build a fort there to protect immigrants and the United States mail from the Indians, and to teach the latter how to raise corn, wheat, potatoes, squash and melons." ”

“ Throughout the whole of the habitable globe there nowhere is to be found more delightful or more invigorating air than that which every traveller through New Mexico, from Albuquerque, past Las Vegas, to the Raton Mountains, is free to breathe.
Miss Grace Winthrop, of Boston, and also Miss Winthrop, her paternal aunt, and also Mr. Hutchinson Port, of Philadelphia, her maternal uncle—all of whom were but forty hours removed from the Alkali Desert west of the Continental Divide—felt in the very depths of their several beings how entirely good this air was ”

“ We have passed any number of little Mexican, or Indian, adobe villages. One house was surrounded by a picket fence painted bright laundry blue. Several had blue door and window frames. [148] The houses were all one-storied and the people looked more Mexican than Indian.
When we finally arrived, without further difficulty, at Las Vegas, it seemed rather questionable whether we would be able to go on next day or not. The barometer was down, several other motorists doleful and the outlook very glum. ”

“ We leave town early with a new arrangement of horses--Dixie beside Bess, and Kate walking behind. Doctor questions how long Dixie, who is so much smaller than Bess and not of the work-horse type, will be able to pull her end, but we leave that question; in fact, we haven’t decided it yet. We are off for Las Vegas, Nevada. We have a road to follow among desert hills and valleys, up and down hill, but find no water except at a railroad water car or cistern. The first day we pass Cima, where we got a bale of wheat hay and water. ”

“ It crosses a section that is mostly desert, but is connected with the Bullfrog District by the Las Vegas & Tonopah, which runs from Goldfieid through Beatty and Rhyolite, and meets the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake at Las Vegas. The Goldfield and Bullfrog districts have a further outlet to the south through a second railway, the Nevada Short Line (Bullfrog-Goldfield and Tonopah & Tidewater railways) which connects with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé at Ludlow in California.
Population.—Nevada is the most sparsely settled state of the Union. Its population in 1860 was 6857 ”

“ Two and a half miles down the river was the mouth of Las Vegas Wash, up which Call and party traveled to old Fort Vegas, where a half-dozen men were found established. In the company's journeyings, El Dorado Canyon was found occupied by miners and there were some adventurers on Cottonwood Island, a tract of bottom land nearby. The expedition was ferried across the Colorado to Hardy's Landing, 337 miles above Yuma. Hardy had a rather extensive establishment, with a store, warehouse, hotel, blacksmith shop, carpenter shop and several dwelling houses. ”

“ The best commentary on the road between Santa Fé and Albuquerque is that it took us less than three hours to make the sixty-six miles, whereas the seventy-three from Las Vegas to Santa Fé took us nearly six. The Bajada Hill, which for days Celia and I dreaded so much that we did not dare speak of it for fear of making E. M. nervous, was magnificently built. There is no difficulty in going down it, even in a very long car that has to back and fill at corners; there are low stone curbs at bad elbows, and the turns are all well banked so that you feel no tendency to plunge off. ”

“ In the Bancroft Library at Berkeley, much information concerning the Nevada point was found in a series of pioneer maps. Of very early designation were old Las Vegas Springs and Beaver Dams, the latter now known as Littlefield. South of the 37th parallel, on a map of 1873, are found Cane Springs, Grapevine Springs and West Point, with Las Vegas (Sp., The Meadows) and Cottonwood as stations on the Mormon road, which divided to the westward at the last-named point. ”

“ Besides being kind enough to let us have the canteen, they told us that the Company was now running a train each day between Las Vegas and Daggett, and that there was a tank car containing a little water on a spur track in the desert about five miles from there, so we started on much encouraged. We had a canteen and were only five miles from a tank car with water in it!
Within a mile we emerged from the canyon, the mountains receded to the north and south, and we surveyed a vast plain of sand. ”

“ It is the way to wealth for the man who knows how to go about it.
About this time two Englishmen arrived in Las Vegas, and we soon got acquainted. One could easily see that they were not tenderfeet. On the contrary, they appeared to be shrewd, practical men of affairs. They had been cattle ranching up north for some years, had a good knowledge of the business, and were "good fellows." They had come south to look out a cattle ranch and continue in the business. ”

“ On arriving at San Lorenzo, New Mexico, I mounted a buck-board and struck out ahead, to Las Vegas, to buy a lot of corn, grub, ammunition, etc., to be delivered at Anton Chico, twenty-five miles south of "Vegas," by the time the crowd got there, so as not to cause any delay. "Bob" Roberson also gave me money to buy a lot of stuff for his outfit.
Arriving in Vegas, during a severe snow storm, I found there wasn't fifty bushels of corn in town, the snow storm having delayed the freight trains. One merchant had just got a bill of several car loads which he expected to arrive any minute. ”

“ Rheumatic and tubercular affections flee, it is said, before this treatment and the wonderful air; and apparently if Ponce de Leon had only chanced upon Las Vegas he would not have searched in vain for his fabled fountain.
Albuquerque is an exceedingly "smart" town. ”

“ In the course of his missionary endeavor, in the spring of 1858, Hamblin took five men and went by way of Las Vegas Springs to the Colorado River, at the foot of the Cottonwood Hills, 170 miles from the Santa Clara, Utah, settlement. Upon this trip he had remarkable experiences. On the river he saw a small steamer. Men with animals were making their way upstream on the opposite side. ”