0:02 [SPEAKER_01]: today you go anywhere and you say, uh, I'm from Las Vegas. 0:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, really? 0:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And yet to this day, people will say, what hotel do you live in? 0:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you kidding me? 0:17 [SPEAKER_01]: We've got 3 million people living here. 0:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you kidding me? 0:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and yet I've had that. 0:25 [SPEAKER_01]: I've had people say, 0:27 [SPEAKER_01]: You run a museum there, what is it? 0:29 [SPEAKER_01]: A poker chips or something? 0:31 [SPEAKER_01]: No, it's a museum. 0:33 [SPEAKER_01]: I run three museums, all right, did. 0:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's say, really? 0:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, three museums in five locations with a six-thout reach. 0:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, but people just got this image from television, movies, all of which is garbage, and it's just amazing. 0:54 [SPEAKER_01]: But, it's got a history, it's done an interesting one. 0:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I have to admit, I didn't really think of Las Vegas as a hometown either until our recent visit. 1:08 [SPEAKER_00]: We went as a team for our crime convention called CrimeCon. 1:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I had always thought of Vegas as a destination, a place you fly in and fly out of. 1:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, the two weeks we spent there, forever changed that perception. 1:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So I wanted to invite Mark Hall Patton on to learn more about the history of Las Vegas, the hometown. 1:35 [SPEAKER_00]: You may recognize Mark's voice from the history channels, on stars, on which he regularly appeared as a visiting expert. 1:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Mark has recently retired, but for many years was the Museum Administrator for the Clark County Museum system, where he oversaw the Clark County Museum, the Howard C. Cannon Aviation Museum, and the Search Light History Museum. 2:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked him the meaning of the name Las Vegas, 2:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Vegas just means metal. 2:20 [SPEAKER_01]: That's why we were on the first map we were on. 2:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And it just meant that there was green here and there was green here because there was water here. 2:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Has nothing to do with the railroad or the town or any of that. 2:34 [SPEAKER_01]: All it means is we had water here. 2:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what the Mexicans who came through here called this. 2:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Now it was just a little key to the name one of 2:47 [SPEAKER_00]: when we landed in Nevada in this shiny, lush oasis, in the middle of the desert. 2:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I found myself wondering why Las Vegas was located here, in such an unlikely place for a major American city. 3:03 [SPEAKER_00]: So I asked Mark, why does Vegas exist? 3:07 [SPEAKER_01]: It is this question to ask. 3:10 [SPEAKER_01]: It is the one that 3:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Most people think they understand and they don't, but it really comes down to water. 3:19 [SPEAKER_01]: That's why we're here, and that's why we are specifically where we are in the desert. 3:27 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's not the Colorado River. 3:30 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not Lake Meade. 3:32 [SPEAKER_01]: But it is this valley. 3:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And the importance of this valley, as with most settlements and human history, 3:43 [SPEAKER_00]: It's no coincidence that practically every major city sits on a major body of water with abundant fresh water nearby. 3:53 [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't have it, or a way to bring it inefficiently, it doesn't matter what else you do have. 4:01 [SPEAKER_01]: This valley happened to have the highest water table of anywhere for probably 60-80 lials 4:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, the Colorado River was there, but it was fast moving. 4:19 [SPEAKER_01]: It was in a very narrow defile. 4:22 [SPEAKER_01]: It was very difficult to get down to and back up from. 4:26 [SPEAKER_01]: It was not water that you could easily use because it was called the Colorado because of the color of the river, it was red. 4:36 [SPEAKER_01]: because it was carrying so much silk down the river. 4:40 [SPEAKER_01]: If you actually wanted to use Colorado River water, you had to scoop it up and let it sit for hours to let all the silk drop down to the bottom of the bucket or whatever you had it in. 4:54 [SPEAKER_00]: that type of water source in that time in place would not be fast or efficient enough to sustain a growing population. 5:03 [SPEAKER_00]: A better source was discovered by a trading expedition, traveling from Santa Fe to California in 1829. 5:11 [SPEAKER_01]: It's being led by Antonio Armijo, 5:23 [SPEAKER_01]: a known path, which outside of the vagus valley, nobody's coming through the vagus valley yet. 5:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a very difficult path because there are no 5:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, so no springs along this path. 5:38 [SPEAKER_01]: There are only two for a 40 mile stretch of the path. 5:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And you couldn't go along the river because there was no beaches, no nothing. 5:49 [SPEAKER_01]: You couldn't be down where the river was. 5:52 [SPEAKER_01]: It was down in this canyon, very narrow canyon. 5:55 [SPEAKER_01]: You were up on mountains up above it. 5:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So you had to carry water for your mules. 6:03 [SPEAKER_01]: the thing about carrying goods across the desert is you had to keep enough food and water for your animals. 6:13 [SPEAKER_01]: So you had to carry the water for that. 6:15 [SPEAKER_01]: You didn't care about your people as much. 6:18 [SPEAKER_01]: They could go without water, but your animals could not. 6:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Because if your animals died, you left your goods behind, you lost money. 6:27 [SPEAKER_01]: You also had outwriters that you had going with you. 6:33 [SPEAKER_01]: One of them was Diego Ramirez, and he had been through part of this area, and he knew that she didn't want to interact with the Mahavi Indianians didn't always react well to anybody being in their territories. 6:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes they'd let you go on through, more often than not, 7:03 [SPEAKER_01]: coming through the area, he was sent out and some other operators were sent out and they found a well in an area today that we know is Good Springs, which is not the Vegas Valley but just on the edge up. 7:20 [SPEAKER_01]: and said, let's go that way, rather than going further down and following the route that we know. 7:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And so that was the beginning of what we know of as the old Spanish trail today. 7:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Was actually not old, nor was it Spanish. 7:39 [SPEAKER_01]: It was actually a new Mexican trail. 7:41 [SPEAKER_01]: But in 1844, 7:45 [SPEAKER_01]: The first person who put a name to the trail was John Charles Fremont who came through this area. 7:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you've been to Vegas, you'll recognize that name. 7:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Fremont Street is basically the old Vegas strip. 8:01 [SPEAKER_00]: This is where you'll find the Golden Nugget. 8:05 [SPEAKER_00]: The D and the six block pedestrian only outdoor mall, known as the Fremont Street Experience. 8:14 [SPEAKER_00]: This new trail, named for the same John Charles Fremont, continued to morph and shift as more and more water sources were found in the Vegas Valley. 8:26 [SPEAKER_01]: It was now coming through the Vegas Valley because they found other and better wells in the valley or springs, it's not wells, it's springs. 8:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Including one that was called big springs. 8:40 [SPEAKER_01]: very simple name, but it was called that because the spring itself was 40 feet across. 8:48 [SPEAKER_01]: This was a huge spring and there was enough water coming up in this spring. 8:54 [SPEAKER_01]: There was enough upward pressure of water there that you couldn't dive under the water. 9:01 [SPEAKER_01]: You could just wait out in the water and just sit there in the water and the water pressure 9:08 [SPEAKER_00]: The difference between a spring and a well is just a matter of where the water is. 9:14 [SPEAKER_00]: If an underground water supply has reached the surface and is visible and accessible, it's a spring. 9:23 [SPEAKER_00]: If it stays underground and you have to dig to find it, it's a well. 9:29 [SPEAKER_01]: So this big spring is still the site of it, is where the water district headquarters is today. 9:40 [SPEAKER_01]: So when you think of the heritage and the history and why we aren't here, that spring, 9:47 [SPEAKER_01]: is the one that you still, you know, what is where the whole water district is here today. 9:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Now we're not using that water. 9:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Now we use the water out of the lake and all of that, but that's what brought us here. 10:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we got this trail through here, not a really good trail, but it was a trail and people would start coming through and buy the 10:11 [SPEAKER_01]: 1850s, the Mormons decided that they were going to come into this area because they were trying to get out of the United States. 10:21 [SPEAKER_01]: wanted to get away from the United States. 10:24 [SPEAKER_01]: So they went to the Great Salt Lake because that was Mexican territory. 10:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And the Mexicans hadn't done anything with it. 10:32 [SPEAKER_01]: So Brigham Young saw that as an area that he could create a new state of desert and his vision of that state. 10:44 [SPEAKER_01]: covered an area that in today's terms would have gone out as far as southern Wyoming, all of Nevada down even into a slice of northern Mexico and Arizona, a huge piece property. 11:00 [SPEAKER_01]: But as soon as they got started in there, all of a sudden we had the Mexican-American War, and he was back in the United States again. 11:10 [SPEAKER_01]: But he knew that in order to be able to claim that territory as Mormon territory, even within the United States, he had to have some settlements in the areas that he was claiming. 11:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Once the Mormons founded this settlement, they opened a led mine on Mount Potosi, at the edge of the valley. 11:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, the mine went bad, and inviting broke out among the Mormon leaders. 11:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Violent attacks from pioid Indians made the area even less appealing, and the colony was soon abandoned. 12:10 [SPEAKER_01]: and people often say that the woman's founded Las Vegas no, but they were the first settlement here, that's true. 12:19 [SPEAKER_00]: If you know anything about Nevada and American history in the 19th century, you already have a pretty good idea of the next major developments in this area's history, mining operations, and the sprawl of the Americans of a war, 12:37 [SPEAKER_01]: We did eventually get a few ranches started in the valley, and the valley started building up a little bit. 12:46 [SPEAKER_01]: But it was still in the middle of nowhere, and you had some mining districts get started by 1860. 12:54 [SPEAKER_01]: You have a mining district up on my potency, and that lasts for 13:00 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's four months, but we get our first newspaper up there, yet the last at least one issue and it's hand-written. 13:09 [SPEAKER_01]: You're not going to put out a lot of issues if it's hand-written. 13:13 [SPEAKER_01]: But it gets put out, mining starts in El Dorado Canyon, which is south of Boulder City between Boulder City and search light. 13:23 [SPEAKER_01]: And that mining area, that district really builds up during the civil war, mainly because of deserters from both sides in the civil war. 13:32 [SPEAKER_01]: They create a couple of communities down there, vindressing. 13:36 [SPEAKER_01]: There's no women down there. 13:38 [SPEAKER_01]: But you have these two. 13:40 [SPEAKER_01]: mining communities once confederate once union and they fight with each other when they're not mining. 13:47 [SPEAKER_01]: They're cowards, they will fight for each other's causes during the Civil War, but they will fight and take pot shots at each other's flags down there. 13:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Following the Civil War, the rest of the 19th century in this area is more or less stable. 14:06 [SPEAKER_01]: The next leap forward was driven by the railroads, which converged on modern day Las Vegas for familiar reason, water, and the turn of the century there it is, a lot of mining 14:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's a guy named Clark who needs who sees a value in building a railroad from San Pedro to Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. 14:48 [SPEAKER_01]: We tend to think of railroads in terms of moving people. 14:51 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not what railroads were built for. 14:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Railroads were built for moving freight. 14:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Even today, 15:01 [SPEAKER_01]: The reason that we have the railroad system that we do in this country is because it is making money. 15:08 [SPEAKER_01]: It is the cheapest way to move freight. 15:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how all these railroads are still making a lot of money. 15:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Clark, he's coming through here and 15:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Why does he have to come to this site because this is where water is? 15:24 [SPEAKER_00]: We noted earlier the importance of water for any human settlement or city. 15:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It was water in the form of natural springs that initially caused people to settle here. 15:37 [SPEAKER_00]: When railroads work sending west, it was water again that attracted them at that point everything steam base. 15:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So you have to come here. 15:47 [SPEAKER_00]: It's when the railroad comes through the town of Las Vegas is surveyed and plated for the first time. 15:55 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the surveyors lays out the first 16:05 [SPEAKER_01]: However, because the railroad bought the range, they have the water. 16:11 [SPEAKER_01]: So yes, you could buy in the original Las Vegas townside, but you had to dig your own wells. 16:18 [SPEAKER_01]: That's now known as the west side. 16:20 [SPEAKER_01]: That's historically poor area of town of Las Vegas. 16:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Because the railroad's going to make money on everything. 16:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So they lay at Clark's Las Vegas townside. 16:31 [SPEAKER_01]: and they start selling lots the auction in May of 1905 and Las Vegas gets started. 16:41 [SPEAKER_01]: And everything starts building up from there. 16:43 [SPEAKER_01]: We are in fact the largest urban area in the United States founded in the 20th century. 16:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why that last fact surprised me. 16:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Many of the old cities have that status because they were founded in natural geographical hubs of one kind or another. 17:03 [SPEAKER_00]: For that same reason, these tend to be our largest cities. 17:08 [SPEAKER_00]: modern engineering, like that behind the Hoover Dam, and Lake Mead, has allowed a new generation of cities to grow. 17:18 [SPEAKER_00]: As Mark said, the largest of these, at least in this country, is Las Vegas. 17:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked him to explain the way, this dam and its reservoir helped make Vegas the global destination 17:35 [SPEAKER_01]: By the early 1920s, it was clear that there was going to have to be a damn bill across the Colorado River. 17:44 [SPEAKER_01]: But before that could be done, there needed to be an agreement among the seven states that were along the Colorado River. 17:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was the Colorado River compact. 18:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And this agreement was who was going to use what amount of water out of the river. 18:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Each state named one individual to meet together to work out the Colorado River Compact. 18:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And there was one person from the federal government. 18:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Herbert Hoover at that point was the Secretary of Commerce under Calvin Cooch. 18:29 [SPEAKER_01]: and he was named to this committee to work out the Colorado River Comchat. 18:39 [SPEAKER_01]: and mentally could not come up with anything. 18:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And he came up with the idea of splitting the states. 18:45 [SPEAKER_01]: There were the split it so that you had the three southern states, California, Arizona, and Nevada, and the four northern states, Utah, and it's Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming. 19:01 [SPEAKER_01]: And, 19:02 [SPEAKER_01]: have these four and these three meet separately and base the water usage non-on cities or towns but on agricultural usage. 19:16 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's why what ended up happening is you get these weird numbers, like Arizona gets 3 million acre feet in California gets 5 million acre feet. 19:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't remember what the northern ones get. 19:32 [SPEAKER_01]: But Nevada only gets 300,000 acre feet out of the river. 19:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I had always thought that Lake Mead was almost Las Vegas's private reservoir. 19:43 [SPEAKER_00]: This turns out to be far from the case. 19:46 [SPEAKER_01]: People think that when they look at the bathtub ring out and Lake Mead, that's because of what Las Vegas uses. 19:55 [SPEAKER_01]: We only get 300,000 acre feet out of there. 19:59 [SPEAKER_01]: don't get any more, unless we put water back in, then we can take more water out, only if we put water in. 20:07 [SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever been to Vegas, chances are high that you arrived on a plane. 20:13 [SPEAKER_00]: When you're as remote as the city is, access becomes as important as water to the growth and life of the community. 20:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So, it shouldn't surprise us that the next major movement in Las Vegas history is connected to the airline industry. 20:34 [SPEAKER_01]: You have to look at the fact that we started out as the railroad tune, the railroad kept us going until the 1920 strike, you know, specific strike. 20:46 [SPEAKER_01]: They tried to kill the town at that point because the Las Vegas, 20:52 [SPEAKER_01]: supported the strike. 20:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And so they moved a lot of the really arts up to Cali any. 20:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And the tunnel had built up into a community by then. 21:02 [SPEAKER_01]: We had just gotten commercial aviation here in 1926. 21:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Western Air Express started flying in here. 21:11 [SPEAKER_01]: We had vibrant down tunnel at that point, big, vibrant. 21:17 [SPEAKER_01]: So 21:18 [SPEAKER_01]: We were able to keep going until the damn got started. 21:22 [SPEAKER_01]: That brought in huge amount of money. 21:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was all federal dollars coming in here. 21:28 [SPEAKER_01]: That continued through the mid-1930s. 21:33 [SPEAKER_01]: That got us through basically the depression. 21:37 [SPEAKER_01]: By the end of the depression, the war was coming. 21:41 [SPEAKER_01]: That was obvious because of Pat Karen, who was the senior US senator from here. 21:49 [SPEAKER_01]: He was a big promoter of aviation. 21:51 [SPEAKER_01]: He was one of the major ones to create the civil aeronautics authority and really help create commercial aviation in the US in the 30s, 40s. 22:04 [SPEAKER_01]: and really pushed the Las Vegas Army Air Base here and so we got that training base here in 1941 and the first Macaron Airfield which is now Nellis Air Force Base. 22:20 [SPEAKER_01]: So we had another huge influx of federal monies during World War II and in 31 we also legalized 22:33 [SPEAKER_01]: we made divorce and marriage much easier. 22:37 [SPEAKER_01]: By 41, we got our first strip casino on the Las Vegas strip. 22:43 [SPEAKER_01]: What we think of as the strip today, at that point, it was Highway 91. 22:48 [SPEAKER_01]: People were coming over from Los Angeles and they were gaming here. 22:53 [SPEAKER_01]: People were coming over here to get divorced or get married. 22:57 [SPEAKER_01]: That was happening. 22:59 [SPEAKER_01]: But then you see the building up casinos in that. 23:05 [SPEAKER_01]: But really right at the end of the war in 1945, you also saw the fact that local people understood, because it wasn't the mob that ever built this place. 23:17 [SPEAKER_01]: It was local people realizing, okay, the war is over. 23:21 [SPEAKER_01]: We've been living on 23:23 [SPEAKER_01]: governmental long, large ass. 23:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's going away. 23:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Because by the end of the war, basic magnesium is closed. 23:32 [SPEAKER_01]: It closed in 1944. 23:34 [SPEAKER_01]: The Las Vegas Army Air Base is closed and it doesn't reopen until 47-48. 23:45 [SPEAKER_01]: So, 1945, Henderson has lost two thirds of its residence. 23:50 [SPEAKER_01]: There's no city there yet. 23:52 [SPEAKER_01]: The federal government is lucky if this is surplus federal property and they're going to sell it off. 23:57 [SPEAKER_01]: The Las Vegas Army Air Base is of no use to them either. 24:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And the local residents are going, we gotta do something. 24:06 [SPEAKER_01]: We're in the middle of the desert. 24:08 [SPEAKER_01]: All these federal dollars have gone away. 24:10 [SPEAKER_01]: They're evaporating. 24:12 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the damage done, they're not going to build another one here. 24:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So what are we going to do? 24:16 [SPEAKER_01]: The Chamber of Commerce decides to create what's called the live wire fund. 24:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is a fund where people donate to local businesses and they start advertising Las Vegas to get people to travel here. 24:32 [SPEAKER_01]: as this is a place to play by day, play by night, and they advertise the lake as a place that you can go in fish, you can ride horses, you can go out to value, fire, you've got these casinos and 24:51 [SPEAKER_01]: restaurants and the fays and shows and music and all of this sort of things and they do everything they can and it's one of these things of if you're here and they can get a picture of you they will send it back to your hometown newspaper to try to get it in the newspaper. 25:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Anything they can do it's we're going to do anything we can do to get our name out there. 25:17 [SPEAKER_01]: and they actually spend more money in 1945 and 46 to advertise Las Vegas in southern Nevada than any place else in the United States. 25:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's this recognition that if we don't do something we're going to dry up. 25:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And they did it and just started building from there. 25:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And as the 40s move into the 50s, and who could see those get built, and people start coming in, they realize they can do some other things. 25:52 [SPEAKER_01]: If somebody famous wants to get married, if some movie actor or singer or whatever, come on over, we'll give you your wedding. 26:01 [SPEAKER_01]: We'll give you a room, we'll give you the cake, but we're going to photograph it. 26:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to get it out there everywhere. 26:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Look at this, so-and-so, that married here. 26:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Here's so-and-so writing a horse, here's so-and-so at the beach. 26:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And they were doing all kinds of things. 26:18 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the ones I love is in the county museum collection. 26:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And I still speak in the first person. 26:24 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm retired from there. 26:26 [SPEAKER_01]: But there's this wonderful picture where they wanted to show people fishing out at the lake. 26:33 [SPEAKER_01]: they had stopped the lake. 26:35 [SPEAKER_01]: The fish hadn't grown up yet. 26:37 [SPEAKER_01]: So they said, when they sent somebody down to just buy some fish at a fish market, just dead fish, go get them and we'll have some guys out on one of the boats. 26:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'll have their reels. 26:50 [SPEAKER_01]: The guy that they sent couldn't find any fish. 26:54 [SPEAKER_01]: So we ended up getting a whole bunch of yields. 26:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's this great picture of all these guys on this power boat on the lake mean and they're all probably holding their rod and reels with eels on them. 27:09 [SPEAKER_01]: There's never been any eels out in lake mean. 27:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just to show up in advertisements in that. 27:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you see the 8x10, if you see it this big, you can't tell what they are. 27:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But you see the 8x10, it's like, 27:23 [SPEAKER_01]: What? 27:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, but it's spelled a name right. 27:27 [SPEAKER_01]: We're okay with it. 27:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And you start looking at things like numbers of people flying in the town. 27:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And you can start seeing this curve of numbers going up. 27:40 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it was 1952 or 53 that the director of aviation at that time went to a commercial aviation conference. 27:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And it may have been united during Jontan, one of them that flew in here was talking about they were going to be going into commercial jets. 27:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the person that was there was running the Department of Aviation here said, I run McCarran Lairport, what year do you foresee bringing commercial jets into the mechanic in southern Nevada? 28:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And he looked at it and said, 28:20 [SPEAKER_01]: You'll never have that many people coming in to Southern Canada. 28:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's okay. 28:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Just watch. 28:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And by 1958, the airport was the number one destination airport in the United States. 28:40 [SPEAKER_01]: And at this point, it's like number seven for number of people going through. 28:49 [SPEAKER_01]: 50, I think it was 52 million arrivals and departures. 28:54 [SPEAKER_01]: It has been as high as the fifth business airport at the US. 28:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And it just tells you the kinds of numbers that come through here. 29:04 [SPEAKER_01]: part of that is because of another U.S. senator from here, who in 1978 pushed the deregulation of the airlines, one of the oddities of Nevada is that two of Nevada's senators did more to change commercial aviation in the United States than any other two U.S. senators on 29:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And the other one was Howard W. Cannon. 29:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of people don't remember him. 29:39 [SPEAKER_01]: But he was the one who got deregulation of the airlines. 29:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Cast. 29:45 [SPEAKER_00]: With the deregulation of the airlines, and a secure water supply behind them, 29:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But the best marketing team in America changed the perception of Las Vegas and helped make it the city we know today. 30:00 [SPEAKER_00]: We might laugh about the picture with the eels and some of the stunts marked ascribed. 30:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But marketing is a bottom line business and ultimately it worked. 30:13 [SPEAKER_01]: It has worked when you think about it. 30:17 [SPEAKER_01]: People know Las Vegas. 30:19 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't know Henderson. 30:21 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't know Boulder City. 30:23 [SPEAKER_01]: They know Las Vegas. 30:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Having grown up in Orange County, California. 30:29 [SPEAKER_01]: People would ask me, where are you from? 30:31 [SPEAKER_01]: It's from Orange County. 30:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And from California, they'd heard of Orange County. 30:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Don't know that. 30:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Santa Ana, don't know that. 30:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Disneyland, okay, I know where you're from. 30:40 [SPEAKER_01]: I founded the Anaheim Museum off of their years ago. 30:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Here's the land they do. 30:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Over here you say Las Vegas, they know Las Vegas. 30:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to thank Mark again for joining us. 30:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you next week.
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