ON THE ROAD
SEARCHING FOR 1905
BY BOB BEERS

Las Vegas’ annual Helldorado Parade, held last month, has yet to connect me with the past. I marched in the original several times with my junior high and high school marching band during the ’70s. I felt nothing then, and I feel nothing today.

In fact, I find irony in Las Vegas. It’s a town that prides itself on constant reinvention, implosions and phoenix-like risings from ashes, yet it’s celebrating an historical 100th anniversary with little tangible reminder of that era. 

As the first railroad lots were sold — the event chosen to signify the beginning of Las Vegas for Centennial purposes — there was a shanty town on the west side of the train tracks, north of today’s downtown. This city of canvas rested on the opposite side of Las Vegas Creek, which has long since become the concrete culvert running along side U.S. 95 between Valley View Boulevard and downtown. There was a steady stream of transient, tough men making a layover en route to the Bullfrog Mining District, close to Beatty. It was a 60-hour stagecoach ride, now a 100-mile drive on U.S. 95.

I find it very difficult to stand at Main and Fremont streets and imagine what it must have been like 100 years ago. There was a brand new railroad station someplace toward the back of the Union Plaza property, next to the brand new San Pedro-Los Angeles & Salt Lake railroad tracks. The Las Vegas Hotel was a tent about a block and a half north. The railroad, then, attracted a thousand people with the promise of owning cheap land on the east side of the tracks.

Eventually, the railroad’s side of the tracks raised enough capital to install streets, water and sewer, and the west side floundered. Today, the west side is the industrial area along Bonanza Road housing the Review-Journal and Ahern Rentals. The railroad lots, meanwhile, turned into “downtown” Vegas.

I find it easier to imagine the birth of Las Vegas standing in the middle of Main Street in Nipton, Calif.

About an hour south of Las Vegas, Nipton is much like the 1905 edition of our city. It was a crossroads-turned-railroad stop, built for many of the same reasons. Nearby mining brought men seeking work to blast and load ore for transport to big city mills. 

However, Nipton did not have the plentiful water that Las Vegas’ springs provided. It was high on an alluvial plain rather than located on a relatively flat valley floor. Thus, Nipton stayed small and quaint while Las Vegas grew large and garish.

Today, Nipton is less than a square mile of old buildings. The General Store has a definite out-of-the-past feel, and the old Nipton Hotel — built in 1910 — has been converted to a small bed and breakfast. Early Hollywood stars Rex Bell and Clara Bow were frequent visitors, en route to their Walking Box Ranch a dozen miles to the east.

But today, Nipton to me is simply the clearest view back to Las Vegas 1905 — just a lonely image 10 miles east of the main vein connecting one fast-paced city to another. LW