Las Vegas, Nev.: “Splendid Climate and Pure Water”

Getting mentally packed for a reporting trip later this month to southern Nevada, I ran across this delightful bit of business, from (I think) 1904:

Early 1900s newspaper advertisement, courtesy  Las Vegas Clark County Library District

Early 1900s newspaper advertisement, courtesy Las Vegas Clark County Library District

William R. Clark, a U.S. Senator from Montana, had bought an old ranch in the valley in 1902, land that became the staging area for the Union Pacific’s construction of a rail line connection Salt Lake City with Los Angeles.

The railroad was completed in 1905, but according to Eugene Moerhring’s history of Las Vegas, a fellow named J.T. McWilliams bought land west of the tracks even before it was completed, pushing a competing townsite which he advertised in Southern California newspapers. You don’t have to drill far for that water!

3 Comments

  1. “The climate of Las Vegas is delightful the whole year round.” I admit, it’s “delightful” to cook eggs without need for an oven or cook stove.

  2. Scot – I’m having a terrible time laying off the comedy gold found in so many of the early western real estate boosters’ rhetoric. I could write an entire book filled solely with this stuff. Maybe that’s my next book.

  3. John: From what I’ve heard, you might have equal writing fun going from early 20th Century LV shilling to Rio Rancho hucksterism Back East only a few decades back. I’m sure the TV ads in NYC for RR included somber analysis of the water usage impact.

    IOW, write that book, too.

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