The Gradual Rise of Prosperity in Las Vegas

With the decrease in the number of travelers between Boulder City and Las Vegas, town boosters had to find a new supply of customers.

Las Vegans still saw their future bound up with Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, but now instead of relying on the regular patronage of construction workers, they hoped that travelers to the dam would stop in Las Vegas along the way.

The town had never really advertised itself to tourists before. It had not needed to appeal to the young, male construction workers who had eagerly sought out the town on their own.

In addition, like many Westerners in the early twentieth century, Las Vegans had previously looked to travelers not for their tourist dollars but rather as potential residents and investigators in the town.

In the 1920s, they hoped to attract farmers to the limited agricultural hinterland, and in the early 1930s they pointed out the potential of cheap electricity from Hoover Dam for the possible industrialization of southern Nevada.

They initially had but partial success, for they were hampered by a lack of vision and self-confidence. Residents of the late 1930s tended to perceive their town as little more than a sideshow to the greater spectacle on the Colorado River.

Las Vegas figured that while the dam would draw the tourist into the vicinity, they would have to make the town appealing enough for a side trip.

At first they did not see gambling as a foremost attraction, even though construction workers and dam visitors had demonstrated its strong allure in the early 1930s. They looked instead to other ideas.

Las Vegans viewed the divorce and marriage business as one tourist staple. Nevada strove to be the most lenient of American states in its divorce statutes, requiring only six weeks' residency to qualify of final legal separation in the 1930s.

Townspeople's limited vision for the future also found expression in the shortsighted theme of the old West, which dominated virtually all publicity campaigns between 1935 and 1945.

Las Vegans sought to enhance the appeal of the town to travelers by playing up its frontier character. Other struggling communities in the American West used a similar approach during the early twentieth century, but Las Vegas proved one of the 'most patently commercial Western charades that snare the tourist.'

It no doubt started innocently enough, for townspeople had naturally identified with the local frontier heritage ever since downtown streets had been named for western explorers in 1905.

In the 1930s, however, the packaging of the old West became so much more pronounced as boosters emphasized bot the modern comforts and opportunities that attract new residents and industrial investors but rather the gimmicks and ballyhoo that appeal to tourists.