Las Vegas. To talk about it is not enough. What is said must be based on something real, some not purely self-referential impression. Our understanding of what we see is based partly on perception, both individual and collective, but also upon the remains and traces of an historical reality. The more evidence we have, the more credible our interpretations. But is difficult to document any culture in an objective, comprehensive or meaningful way. And it is impossible to collect anything that resembles a representative sampling of real life. What constitutes a reliable or accurate representation of historical reality for such a complex and contradictory place like Las Vegas, a town that consciously projects an image of fantasy and delusion, and has historically and successfully hidden the man behind the black curtain? We have portraits of the illusion but little evidence of how the trick is done. If we are to collect and document the reality and unreality of Las Vegas, its uniqueness as an urban phenomenon, its people, it must be approached from all vectors and angles of crossing disciplines. If Las Vegas is a real place, with a real history with more substance than media, we must provide the information on which meaningful interpretation and criticism can be based. We needs to develop collections of multi-format cultural text. We need to identify what needs to be known and find it or create it. Special Collections will assure its preservation and accessibility into the future.

The Special Collections division of the UNLV Libraries has played a critical role in documenting the history, culture and physical environment of the city of Las Vegas and is now the largest single repository of historical information about Las Vegas. From its initial collection of "Nevadiana" in which the city of Las Vegas was seen as a frontier outpost settled by westering, often Mormon, pioneers, the collections and the focus of the department have shifted to a more self-consciously urban focus, in which Las Vegas is seen as a unique urban and cultural American phenomenon; a subject of research, not only for traditional local or urban historians but for a growing number of faculty and students in architecture, urban planning, landscape design, sociology, human geography and demographics, business and economics, marketing, labor and industrial relations, communication and the media, public policy and administration. The historical context for the urban phenomenon is now an integral part of many academic disciplines.

The purpose of collecting is to identify and acquire critical collections of recorded information that will explain how Las Vegas developed into the unique city it has become. We collect the information that is, or will be, the basis for current and future research and teaching in all aspects of urban culture from cross and interdisciplinary perspectives. Our collections are inclusive, eclectic, multidimensional, captured and stored in all formats.

Building on collections of traditional historical materials such as family and personal papers, the papers and records of clubs, societies and organizations Special Collections has sought and acquired new collections, re-processed older collections and have a number of new initiatives the purpose of all which is to capture and make more easily accessible better documentation of Las Vegas and its environment.

Union Pacific Railroad Collection

After a period of scattered ranches, a town of Las Vegas was brought into being by the railroad. The Railroad was the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City Railroad (later bought out by the Union Pacific System) and it built a town around its depot and watering stop between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Las Vegas was a company town and the railroad was the company. In 1997 UNLV Special Collections acquired the corporate archives of the Union Pacific Railroad's Las Vegas operations. Because the railroad did more than simply run a railroad, i.e. it developed, built and promoted a town, owned and operated its utilities, and was its major industry and employer, its archive constitute the most comprehensive extant historical collection documenting the beginning of the city of Las Vegas.

The railroad built railroad buildings, passenger stations, stockyards, an icehouse, houses and dormitories for its employees, a hospital. The railroad owned property that it sold or leased to businesses and residents. The railroad owned the springs and laid water pipes and leased water rights, built sewers, installed fire hydrants, built streets, curbs and sidewalks, and provided electricity. The railroads laid track and acquired rights of way and easements. The railroad serviced industrial centers and the new planned communities that surrounded them. The records of all these activities, the laying of the initial infrastructure of the city, are in the Union Pacific archives, from the sale of the original town lots, to the leases of the employee cottages, (the few remaining are designated historic structures), the specifications and architectural drawings of all its buildings (including the two successive Las Vegas passenger stations), engineering reports, the minutes of the meetings of the Board of Directors of the Las Vegas Land and Water Co. (the subsidiary that controlled real estate development and water) to tax and rent receipts, minutes of meetings of the Chamber of Commerce and Rotarians, (the railroad's local executive officers were prominent civic figures), the personal correspondence of its vice-presidents, subject files on women, minorities, labor unions, water conservation as well as on other issues in which the railroad became involved, as well as the more obvious financial and legal records generated by any large corporation. There is much urban history here beyond the operations of railroad.

Architecture - Martin Stern Jr., YESCO

The Las Vegas Strip with its mega-resort hotel/casinos has developed a distinctive architectural style and type, which has now been copied and exported to other gaming and resort cities as well as to suburban centers of Las Vegas and its environs. Not only has this architecture transformed the physical environment of Las Vegas, it has become a liet-motif for post-modern architecture. Aesthetically eclectic it has become a hallmark of the themed amusement park that characterizes new urban entertainment and recreational centers. The architectural records of the development of the strip properties constitutes an important record of urban design and development, and as such is a rich resource for students of architecture and urban design from around the world. UNLV acquired the life work of architect Martin Stern, Jr., whose office was in Los Angeles (where his career began designing Googie-style coffee shops) but whose major contribution was in Las Vegas. Stern designed or renovated many of the major strip properties including the original MGM Grand, and Hilton International, as well as the first wave of high-rise room towers on the strip: the Stardust, Sahara, Riviera, Sands, and downtown, the Fremont and Mint. It can be said that it was Martin Stern who truly transformed the architectural landscape of Las Vegas, who raised the skyline and took the low-slung sprawling strip motel with its two-story room wings around a pool, to the imposing high-rise hotel that now characterizes the Strip. It was Stern who introduced with the International, the triform tower with the central elevator which is the most copied tower block design on the Strip as evidenced by the Belagio, Treasure Island, Mirage, Monte Carlo, Mandalay Bay and the Venetian Hotels. The Stern collection comprises over 300 projects, for over 100 constructed or renovated buildings and a number of major seminal designs which were not built, most significantly, the Xanadu, which presaged the pyramidal design of the Luxor. The records include over 600 sets of drawings containing over 20,000 sheets documenting all stages of design and construction. As the premier designer of mega-resort hotels, conceived as self-contained mini-cities, Stern was the master of integrating all the complex functions of the modern resort hotel from parking, landscaping, to showrooms, convention space and restaurants. He understood the economics of luxury suites and casinos. And he knew what colors to put near which bank of slot machines. His design and renovation of casinos have made his plans the subject of interest for students of how interior space of hotel casinos has evolved from the earliest highway motel-with-nightclub settings to the modern themed hotel. And he transported his designs to other places. He was the most prolific architect in Reno/Lake Tahoe and Atlantic City and designed resorts in Hawaii and Japan.

UNLV is also negotiating for the acquisition of the drawings of Stern's contemporary Homer Rissman, whose influence in Las Vegas is as extensive as Stern's. The projects that Stern did not design, Circus, Circus and the Aladdin for example, Rissman did. There is an important historical component to these collections. As later renovators of the earliest Las Vegas hotels, these architectural collections contain the original drawing for many historic hotels such as the Sands, Stardust, Sahara, and Dunes. As these properties, and the buildings on them, dominated Las Vegas, the surviving records of these building comprise a unique and significant urban collection.

UNLV also acquired in 1997 the corporate archives of the Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) who transformed commercial signs into an urban art form that has come to define not only our urban landscape but also the city of Las Vegas itself. The lights of YESCO's signs are a landmark unto themselves, objects of historical preservation. They have assumed an architectural dimension that overawes the often-insignificant buildings behind them. The collection is a photographic record of the YESCO Company's projects, documenting design -- including the original design drawing for Vegas Vic -- construction, and installation. The corporate records include Tom Young's original record book where he penciled in the orders he received when he drove down to Las Vegas from Salt Lake City in the 40's, and oral histories conducted by the corporate archivist of some of the original sign artists.

Urban Planning - Clark County Planning Commission

A metropolitan region of explosive growth is a test-site for urban planning. Urban planning in Clark County is often defined as 'managing growth' and it is an overwhelming task simply to record and digest all the information about that growth. As the agency charged with comprehensive planning for the entire county, the Clark County Planning Commission gathers, tracks, compiles and reports on a staggering amount of data. The Planning Commission has maintained a reference library from which it has, over the years transferred material to UNLV Special Collections. Recently the Planning Commission offered to the UNLV Architectural Studies Library the bulk of its collections comprising over 5000 reports and studies and over 200 maps. The majority of this collection will be housed in Special Collections. These studies range from water and air quality, water and waste management, flood control, population, transportation, land and industrial development, housing and construction, health, schools, nuclear waste and storage, energy, public lands and recreation, governmental organization, environmental impact studies, as well as planning documents and reports produced by the various municipal and regional entities in the county, Las Vegas, Henderson, Boulder City, and the Moapa Valley.

Master-planned residential communities

Beyond the strip Las Vegas has developed a unique pattern of residential communities, the master-planned communities of which Sumerlin, Green Valley and Sun City are the largest, most comprehensive and broadest in vision. The master-planned community with its well-defined village components providing a mix of public and private space, recreational, educational, cultural and retail facilities integrates an overall vision of comfortable residential life within a larger urban environment.

This new form of suburbanism, while drawing on models from southern California and Phoenix has had a particularly defining role in shaping modern Las Vegas. Urban and business historians, sociologists, architecture and landscape design historians, urban planners, all those who study the new urban environments, have become increasingly aware of the importance of, and have written about, these new urban residential communities. To understand how the metropolitan area developed, we must understand how Summerlin, Green Valley and Sun City were conceived, planned and developed, the concepts which underlay their development, the economic, sociological and aesthetic ideas on which they are based. UNLV has approached the Howard Hughes Corporation (Summerlin), American Nevada (Green Valley), and the Del Webb Corporation (Sun City) to negotiate the transfer of records such as planning and design documents -- site, architectural, traffic, water and utilities plans, photographs, correspondence, memos, minutes of meetings, budgets and financial projections, press and public relations material, and advertising, which document the conceptualization, planning, design, development, financing, construction, marketing, and sales and corporate interaction with city, county or other governmental agencies and with contractors, developers, retailers and commercial tenants, and other commercial or financial institutions. Del Webb Corporation has already transferred architectural drawing and has agreed to transfer Las Vegas material from their corporate archives in Phoenix. Discussions with Hughes and American Nevada are currently under way and will hopefully reach fruition in the near future.

Entertainment

While Las Vegas has become known primarily as a gambling resort, in fact, as important to its tourist industry is its entertainment industry. Las Vegas has in a sense, lived up to its self-promotion as the entertainment capital of the world. From a venue for New York nightclub shows in the first strip hotels, in which the entertainment director took precedence over the casino boss, Las Vegas has developed a unique and distinctive genre of adult entertainment perhaps most associated with the frenchified showgirl of the Las Vegas Shows, Lido de Paris and Follies Bergere, and its spin-offs of headliners, standup comics, and magicians. Documenting this aspect of Las Vegas is as important as documenting its politics and infrastructure. This is the culture of Las Vegas which attracts the tourists and which still dominates the tone of the city. UNLV has acquired a number of significant collections from the PR and entertainment departments of the significant hotels, the Sands, home to Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, the Dunes, the Frontier, and the Thunderbird. Collections of prominent producers, Harold Minsky and Matt Gregory have also been acquired.

The Donn Arden Collection. Donn Arden, preeminent showman and producer, who brought the Lido to Las Vegas and whose last show Jubilee is still running to sell-out crowds at Bally's died in 1994. His long-time business associate and executor, Mr. Walter Craig, determined that the collection of theatrical material which Arden had accumulated throughout his long career should be placed at UNLV Library's Special Collections because of Arden's long-standing identification with Las Vegas. Arden's collection documents a remarkable entertainment career spanning over 40 years through photographs, costume and set designs, programs and posters, business correspondence, contracts, budgets, music and scripts. It is one of the richest collection related to Las Vegas entertainment and will complement other collections already in Special Collections, such as those from the Sands, Dunes, Desert Inn, Frontier and Thunderbird Hotels, the extensive Harold Minsky Collection and the collection of Las Vegas producer Matt Gregory. The Donn Arden collection will further distinguish UNLV Library's Special Collection as the premier repository of historical material on the history of Las Vegas entertainment.

Oral History

The best, and often only, record there is of Las Vegas's actual past, given its unique history and the nature of the businesses on which it was based, is in the memories of people who still live here. It is recognized that a more determined and comprehensive attempt to capture that record is needed to complement the traditional written record. A number of projects currently underway within the university such as History Professor Joanne Goodwin's Las Vegas Women in Gaming and Entertainment Project, and outside the university, such as the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Oral History Project and the Las Vegas Gay Archives Oral History Project being conducted by local historian Dennis McBride deposit material in the library. Special Collections currently houses over 1600 recorded interviews which speak to a need for a more permanent center for coordinating all these related activities. There is also a growing interest and support for oral history in the community. Las Vegas is discovering an interest in itself and its identity, and its history, especially as it comes from its own mouth. An Oral History Program could be a major community-university collaborative enterprise.

A generous gift from Dr. Harold Boyer has allowed Special Collections to begin an oral history program. Working closely with members of the community (in this case the Rotary Club, of which the donor is a long-time member) a list of subjects for interviews have been identified, and graduate students will be conducting preliminary research and interviews. It is hoped that this program will grow and that the university will commit to the funding of a permanent oral history program for the university. Meanwhile the Library will be cooperating with the new Public History Program in the History Department to provide opportunities and funding for graduate students to receive practical training in oral history, and will continue to house and make accessible tapes and transcripts.

Gaming Research Collections

This collection was established by the library as part of Special Collections as a central research repository of information relating to gambling and commercial gaming as it developed in Las Vegas and became a model for an international industry. As the major industry of Las Vegas, gaming, associated closely with the hotel and entertainment industries, is a critical facet of the history of Las Vegas, and the collection provides an important part of the documentation of that history. The collections document the history of games and gambling and includes many rare volumes dating from the 17th century. Subjects in which the collection focuses are the economics and regulation of the gaming industry, the psychological, social, and political effects of gambling, the statistical and mathematical basis of games of chance, marketing, the management of casinos and the history of specific Las Vegas hotel and casinos. Significant collections have been developed in the specific and related fields of organized crime and prostitution. Cultural aspects of gaming are represented in collections of literature and periodicals concerning Las Vegas and gambling, and in the visual material of photographs and motion pictures.

Collecting and Popular Culture

We do not collect popular culture (however it might be defined) for its own sake. First and foremost we justify collecting by its use or potential use - and one does need to be concerned with credibility here. So we try to track or predict what the interpreters and critics of our culture are interpreting or criticizing - and try to identify, locate, acquire and then commit an enormous amount of the university's resources in preserving forever -- because someone at UNLV or maybe from some other far off place, like California, might actually use it. It took an architectural historian from Yale to make Las Vegas a legitimate object of academic study - now its academically trendy to Learn from Las Vegas, especially as the rest of the world slowly turns into Las Vegas. The point is we can easily follow academics into the sea of popular culture because they are now defining it and interpreting it and teaching it in very sophisticated ways.

Culture is hard to collect in any comprehensive or meaningful way. You can concentrate of certain types or genre of documentation. But to do it for such a complex and contradictory place like Las Vegas where do you start? As and archivists and historians we start with things that are reliable or accurate representations of an historical reality. But how do you find an accurate representation of unreality because this is a town that consciously projects an image of fantasy and delusion. We see Bellagio, as Steve Winn (or now MGM-Mirage) wanted us to see it either physically or in the very documents his company produces. But do we ever see how it really works?

Take a true Las Vegas cultural icon: the Sands Hotel. Where Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack performed. We have the architectural drawings, we have the files of Al Freeman PR director for the hotel, we have the files of Bill Hannah, PR Director for Howard Hughes who bought the hotel, including photos and footage of Bob Maheu. We have over 50 cubic feet of photographs of the hotel and what when on in the hotel. We have the photographic archives of the company that built its famous marquee. We have reels of film shot in the hotel. We have menus from the hotel. We have newsletters and advertising brochures. We have recordings made in hotel. We have no idea, and no records documenting how the hotel was run, where the money came from and where it went. We have heard stories about where the money came from and where it went (I've talked to someone who was one of Jack Entratter's bagmen, who actually transported bags of money) - We have a lot of documentation of the entertainment culture of the Sands, or of the Sands as projected by their PR department and the media. And you can see a lot of that on TV these days. There's a real fascination with Vegas in the Rat Pack Days and I have footage of the Rat Pack performing at the Sands. And when HBO did that awful movie on the Rat Pack we provided them with the dimensions and floorplan of the Copa Room from the architectural drawings we have. And they still got it totally wrong. The reality was wrong for the image they wanted to project in the movie.

But the culture of the guys who ran the Sands, and the Desert Inn, and the Dunes etc etc. We have a lot of anecdotes but very little documentation. And this is not just true of the Mafia, its equally true of the sex industry, the gaming industry, and a lot of things here.

When I teach an archives course in the history department I tell the students that as important as understanding what we can document is understanding what we can't and knowing the relationship between the two -- which is that we can document only a small and incomplete part of culture popular or whatever - and we need to keep that perspective in the back of our mind when we make our cultural pronouncements. What's not there is as significant as what is.

So, anyone who can lead us to new sources we will follow, anyone who has a new take on it, who is creating documentation through interviews and oral histories, we will follow and scoop up what we can.

Peter Michel, Director of Special Collections

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