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March 8, 2006
Schumacher sees 'old' Vegas in Pahrump
By PHILLIP GOMEZ
Las Vegas was literally exotic then - strikingly unusual, excitingly provocative, mysteriously alien. A "striptease" culture of exotica pervaded Fremont Street and that early Strip. For a boy of 11 years, it was impressive. I remember the glitzy, colorful, racy casino-hotel signs everywhere, particularly the sly-friendly welcome of Cowboy Vic's "Howdy, Partner!" The lure was there; I remember how I just couldn't wait until I was 21, a legal adult, so I could gamble at the slot machines, and do other things as well. I recall nightfall when the town came alive, and it was exotic. There was an aura of the illicit about the place: legal gambling of all kinds and other signs advertising something with a risqué ring to it called "burlesque." The names of the casinos evoked the region's frontier gambler-prospector past - El Rancho Vegas, the Last Frontier, the Pioneer Club. The Las Vegas I remember on that brief visit still held onto a vestige of its 1930s and '40s self-image as an "ersatz Old West outpost." Geoff Schumacher, author of "Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas," says that 70 years ago, that was how Las Vegas styled itself. Schumacher was the guest speaker Saturday at the Pahrump Community Library's book-author forum put on by the Friends of the Library. Schumacher's book chronicles how Vegas jettisoned that older, fusty image and began its modern makeover that we recognize today. Beginning in the 1970s, gaining speed in the '80s and taking off in the 1990s, Las Vegas' postmodern history has been one of reinventing itself as a destination resort modeled on Florida's Disney World, Epcot Center, Sea World, etc. Since then Vegas has dedicated itself to meeting and then exceeding expectations of an international market of family vacationers. For me, Las Vegas has come full circle. Capitalizing on the family-values tourism market first discovered in Orlando's economic boom of the early 1970s, Las Vegas has gone from parlor fantasy of an Old Western town to Disney-inspired, fantasy-themed mega-casinos. At the same time Vegas shed much of its naughty, racy image - everything I found so enchanting as a boy in my first visit, when everything was more on a human scale and more beguiling. And what happened in Las Vegas hasn't at all stayed there: America has become Las Vegasized with legalized casino "gaming" now found in 48 states and on practically all Indian reservations. It's still the gambling capital of the world, but much of the allure has gone out of the seductive lure that made Las Vegas "Vegas." Gambling and media-simulated sex are now readily available everywhere; sin has become banal. Nye County still holds the franchise on legal prostitution in Southern Nevada, but otherwise the fantasy of the Old West is dead. Except in a few places like Crystal and Pahrump, "the heart of the new West," where the number of horse-owners can exert the political clout to keep the area rural and the fantasy alive. But Schumacher, who lived in Pahrump and Crystal and graduated from Pahrump Valley High School, says that Pahrump is following the same worn and wayward trail as Las Vegas in its heyday. That's not to say "hay days," although he noted that a few residents on the periphery of the three cities in the Las Vegas Valley own horses and continue to eke out a rural lifestyle. In the Pahrump Valley suburban growth has already overtaken government's ability to provide the town with needed infrastructure: the parks and ballparks, the libraries, necessary expansions of its police and fire departments, water and sewer systems, intercity transit for its senior population, schools for its children without resorting to double sessions, a beltway to ease local traffic congestion, paved roads, flood control to keep the roads intact and an airport to connect with the distant, outside world. "I think there are lessons in this book about where we're headed," says Schumacher. "Las Vegas never got ahead of its growth in (terms of) its infrastructure." Las Vegas' biggest growth spurt came in the 1990s, which Schumacher says resulted in an adolescent's attitude of opportunistic growth for its own sake, to be taken advantage of while the getting was good. "The regret is that we did not use this amazing good fortune for the benefit of everyone, that in many ways we failed during this period to see the big picture, think of the long term, solidify the community's foundations," Schumacher writes. Las Vegas "has yet to become a genuine community. Las Vegas is still a congregation of capitalists and consumers in a geographic location." Residents of the city moved there to escape history, Schumacher says. The same can be said for any number of urban areas where retirees have come to live, mostly in the Southwest - Salt Lake City and St. George, Utah, Albuquerque, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., Boise, Idaho. But those places were already fairly well established before the snowbirds got there. Sooner or later people want to know about their origins as a locality, says Schumacher. They come to want museums, libraries and cultural events that explain their history. They want to get real. Schumacher remembers when Pahrump had 2,500 people living here in 1978. "Las Vegas was always behind the curve. I worry greatly that Pahrump is way behind the curve and needs to get real serious, real soon, to catch up. "If you don't catch up it causes all sorts of urban problems," he says - double sessions in schools being only one remedy. "Some people have a hard time coming to grips with growth and don't want to see incorporation," Schumacher says. Schumacher recommended that a delegation be formed to investigate how other small cities, such as Fernley, Elko and Mesquite, went about incorporating their towns. Mesquite, farther away from Las Vegas than Pahrump by 20 miles, did not become the bedroom community that Pahrump became, he noted. Instead, it developed as a service community to Interstate 15 travelers. Objectively, Las Vegas faces limits to its growth because of the scarcity of water in the Las Vegas Valley - Spanish for "the meadows" - the spring-water oasis originally responsible for bringing people there. They're still coming. But it's no longer for the water; they assume that will be provided. Today it's for the sun. Las Vegas' present population is estimated at 2.8 million. "It's going to race toward 3 million," says Schumacher. The population is expected to hit the 3.5 million mark by 2026. Like putting in wider highways, people and traffic always seem to overtake the infrastructure available. Schumacher doesn't think the lack of water will ever limit Las Vegas' growth, though the percentage of growth will doubtless diminish over time, he says. "Las Vegas has money, and money buys water," he says. "The money is just going to flow, and they want the water to flow in return." Schumacher was speaking of plans for a federally approved pipeline delivering water to Las Vegas from Lincoln and White Pine counties. He says, "If I had one piece of advice for rural Nevada, I would say, 'Demand money.' "If Las Vegas didn't have the money, Las Vegas would dry up in 10 years." But residents need to understand the economic forces at play in Nevada and in the nation. "It's part of a much more ominous situation," Schumacher says. People are moving here from the East, the Midwest and California to find the American Dream that once was met by Los Angeles. Now, it's places like Las Vegas - and to a lesser extent, Pahrump. "It's part of a bigger migration," he says. People are seeking a sunny climate in which to live. Spiraling housing costs in California make high housing prices in Las Vegas and elsewhere relative, he says. Like the West generally in 19th-century American history, under-developed "frontier" towns like Pahrump serve as an economic safety valve to ease population pressures in industrial cities where the struggle for existence is unrelenting. Metropolises like Las Vegas represent the transplanted, encroaching East, or California, for fantasy places like Pahrump, where you can build your "dream" home and think you'll be left alone. Schumacher is more than an author. He is a longtime journalist in Nevada and is the director of community publications for the Stephens Media Group, owner of the Pahrump Valley Times and other newspapers, including its flagship publication the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The PVT is among the several newspapers Schumacher oversees. |
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