Before Gaming . . . Celebrating Las Vegas' Centennial, 1905-2005

Before Gaming. Before Hotels. Before the tourists came. Where Indians, explorers, settlers, and ranchers wandered, set down, picked up, and mostly moved on. Until the San Pedro, Salt Lake and Los Angeles Railroad stopped for water. Then Las Vegas was a small railroad depot-with-a-town in the desert.

The earliest images of Las Vegas are from the private collections of the families who were here in 1905 or who arrived soon after: Helen Stewart, Walter Bracken, William Ferron, Ed Von Tobel, Fred and Maurine Wilson.

Helen Stewart and her husband took over the Las Vegas Ranch with its important springs in 1882. After her husband died in 1884, Helen operated the ranch and purchased large tracts of neighboring land on speculation in anticipation of the coming of the railroad. She sold the ranch to the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad in 1902. It was on Helen Stewart's property that the railroad laid out the Las Vegas town site in 1905. The photos from the Stewart Family collection contain family portraits and scenes from the ranch—sometimes referred to as the Old Ranch—as well as the town itself as it was being built. Like the photographs in other early family collections, these were not all amateur family snap shots, but professional photographs collected by members of the family. Because many people collected these professional views of their town, like postcards, the same images are found in the collections of different families. The photographs in the Stewart Collection, however, are some of the finest surviving prints of these photographs. The collection was donated to UNLV Special Collections in 1980 by the grandchildren of Helen Stewart. Among the photos are a number of scenes from the ranch showing people living in tents. The tents housed people who came to Las Vegas in 1905 to attend the land auction of the town site.

Walter Bracken was a civil engineer who in 1901 assisted in locating the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad through what was to become Las Vegas. In the course of the field survey Bracken stayed at the Stewart ranch and immediately recognized that the oasis of meadowland watered by the Las Vegas creek and springs would be an ideal watering depot for the new railroad. He so recommended to Senator William Clark of Montana, the owner of the railroad, who purchased the land from Helen Stewart in 1902. Walter Bracken took up residence in a tent house on the ranch as the agent of the railroad. It was Bracken who managed the subdivision of the original town site, the auction of the lots and the laying of the redwood water pipes which brought water from the Las Vegas Springs to the new town site. After Bracken married Anna Johnson in 1905, they moved onto the ranch until they built their own house in the new town. The Brackens took and collected photographs of the ranch and the town, which Walter Bracken later gave to Mrs. William Ferron. These photographs, which include the Bracken's personal photo albums, are now a part of the Ferron-Bracken Collection.

William Ferron was a pharmacist who came to Las Vegas in 1916 to be a partner with Dr. Roy W. Martin in operating a drug store at First and Fremont Streets. Ferron eventually owned and operated most of the pharmacy businesses and drug stores in Las Vegas. The Ferrons lived in a substantialstone residence at the corner of Fourth and Fremont Streets, originally built for John S. Park. William Ferron served as the third mayor of Las Vegas, and he and his wife were both interested in the history of the town. The Ferron-Bracken Collection was donated to UNLV by Mrs. Ruth Ferron, in 1976.

Fred and Maurine Wilson were also collectors of local history, geology and archeology. The Wilsons arrived in Las Vegas in 1925. Fred worked for the postal service and Maurine was an accomplished musician, music teacher and church organist for the First Methodist Church for twenty-nine years. The Wilsons, with their close friend and fellow local historian, Dr. William S. Park (son of John S. Park who built the house later owned by the Ferrons), together enjoyed photography and home movie-making. They collected a substantial library on Southern Nevada history. The collection, which included the photograph collection and the collection of 16mm movies, was donated to UNLV by Maurine Wilson in 1976. The film collection, called the Wilson-Park Collection, contains some of the earliest film footage of Las Vegas dating from the 1930s.

Ed Von Tobel arrived in Las Vegas in May 1905 on the first passenger train into the soon-to-be town. He came to attend the auction. Having purchased property in the new townsite, Von Tobel returned to Los Angeles, bought lumber supplies, a wagon and a team of horses, and shipped them by freight car to Las Vegas where he established the Ed Von Tobel Lumber Company. As a primary construction supply business in a booming and building railroad town, Ed Von Tobel did well, and the Von Tobels have been fixtures of the Las Vegas business community ever since. The collection of photographs from the family was donated to UNLV by Jacob Von Tobel, eldest son of Ed Von Tobel.

Schools and children

In the new town there were children, and the children went to school. Most family photograph collections contain images of children and their schools and this was true even in 1905. The first school was a tent on the old ranch in which Miss Alma Tuttle presided. In the summer of 1906 the school board, consisting of Rev. John W. Bain, the first Methodist minister; R.E. Lake, a barber; and Mr. Dan Nolan, authorized the construction of the first permanent school house in Las Vegas at the corner of 2nd and Lewis streets. It had two rooms and two teachers, Mrs. Ella H. Palmer and Mrs. Elsie Bartlett. On Sundays Dr. Bain held his church services in the school house.

On July 8, 1909, immediately following the creation of Clark County, the Las Vegas Land and Water Company, a subsidiary of the railroad, gave to the Clark County School District two city blocks bounded by Fourth, Fifth, Clark and Bridger streets, as a site for schools. A mission-style two-story school was erected at Fourth and Bridger Streets in 1910 to accommodate elementary and high school grades. It was simply the Las Vegas School. In 1917 the Clark County High School, later to become Las Vegas High School was constructed next to the grammar school on the Clark Avenue corner. When the new Las Vegas High School was built in 1930, at 7th and Bridger, the old high school became a Junior High School, but it was destroyed by a fire in May of 1934. The school replacing it became known as the Fifth Street School.

The high school class photos from the Von Tobel collection were taken on the steps of the Las Vegas School when the high school was still combined with the grammar school. The photos of the grammar school were taken after 1917 when the high school was built, visible beyond the grammar school.

When not in school the children played at the old ranch and had Sunday picnics, or went swimming in the creek.

For a complete list of photograph collections in Special Collections see: http://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/photographs_alpha.html. There are item-level inventories linked to this list for the Stewart, Ferron-Bracken, and Fred and Maurine Wilson Collections.