0:10 [SPEAKER_00]: How would you feel about pulling up a lawn chair to watch a nearby explosion of an atomic bomb? 0:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Believe it or not, this used to be common. 0:22 [SPEAKER_00]: When the US government chose a nuclear testing site, about 60 miles outside of Las Vegas, the city did what it did with just about everything else. 0:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It turned it into a marketing campaign. 0:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It used the proximity of these massive radioactive disasters to get more people to come to Vegas. 0:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Las Vegas and Nevada Historian Mark Hall Patton, who you may know from the history channel show, Pawn Stars, is here with us again today, to discuss atomic tourism and overlooked Las Vegas stories. 1:08 [SPEAKER_01]: The fact was that once we got the test side here, it was something that we saw as a positive. 1:17 [SPEAKER_01]: That was something that it brought in, well, one, it brought in money. 1:23 [SPEAKER_01]: That's always a positive. 1:24 [SPEAKER_01]: But it also brought in a large amount of jobs. 1:33 [SPEAKER_01]: a large amount of very well educated individuals. 1:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And so that was a positive in the community as well. 1:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was interesting because the community at one point in the county logo had a mushroom cloud on it. 1:53 [SPEAKER_01]: at one point in the 1950s. 1:55 [SPEAKER_01]: This was just something that we did. 1:59 [SPEAKER_01]: The AEC used to talk about radiation as sun units. 2:05 [SPEAKER_01]: We were learning about what these were about. 2:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you were somebody of 2:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Some were now, and I remember interviewing the first woman vice-president of a scheduled airline who was vice-president Bananza Airlines here. 2:23 [SPEAKER_01]: They would invite folks like that to come out and view at a above-ground test. 2:31 [SPEAKER_01]: So this was back in the 50s and you'd be miles away from the test, of course. 2:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And she was out of one of these. 2:38 [SPEAKER_01]: She said she didn't remember most of the people that were there, but you remember that the fellow sitting right next to her was the governor of Nebraska. 2:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And these folks would come in from all over the country. 2:51 [SPEAKER_01]: This was a really cool thing. 2:53 [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to go see. 2:55 [SPEAKER_01]: a new fair bomb going off. 2:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Wow. 2:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And they were sitting there and they were all giving given these dark glasses and I had to learn radiation tags and all of that. 3:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're sitting there and their handlers telling them, okay, no. 3:12 [SPEAKER_01]: have to turn your heads. 3:13 [SPEAKER_01]: You can't watch the exact time of the explosion at that point because it's that's way too bright. 3:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But we'll tell you when you can turn back and watch it. 3:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And so everybody turns their heads. 3:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you can turn back and they all do and watching the cloud go up and there 3:32 [SPEAKER_01]: watching these old streamers. 3:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things about a nuclear blast is you see colors that you will never see other cities. 3:41 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just something really quite amazing to see, apparently, in person, is amazing on film anyways. 3:53 [SPEAKER_01]: But she said it was, they're all sitting there and they're just kind of watching this thing go up and they can see the shockwave and their miles away. 4:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I think she seems five or six miles from the side of the blast. 4:08 [SPEAKER_01]: it's going up and up and these streamers of stuff is coming down and all of that and it's just amazing and the blast wave is going out and it keeps going up and the blast wave keeps going and eventually they have miscued on this. 4:22 [SPEAKER_01]: The blast wave hits them and knocked them all out of their chips. 4:26 [SPEAKER_01]: and they're laying there on the ground and they all got up and kind of brushed themselves off and they just swept them off or whatever and I was interviewing her in an oral history and I said go, didn't that bother you? 4:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And she said, no, we were just kind of, wow, look at that! 4:53 [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't. 4:54 [SPEAKER_01]: What did you say? 4:55 [SPEAKER_01]: She said, well, what I remember is when we were all saying, look at the power we have. 5:01 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the thing of it was at that time before we really understood all of what was all that could happen. 5:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And what 5:18 [SPEAKER_01]: how badly it could go. 5:20 [SPEAKER_01]: The community just used it for advertising. 5:26 [SPEAKER_01]: They would take mannequins out from sears. 5:28 [SPEAKER_01]: There was a searers down on free-mott street. 5:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And they borrowed a bunch of mannequins, took them out, put them in one of the houses for one of the above-ground tests. 5:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And then after the test was over, they decontaminated them, brought them back into town and put them in the front windows of the store. 5:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So you could walk down and see them. 5:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And they would have atomic sales. 5:55 [SPEAKER_01]: And if there's the famous photo of misatomic bomb, which wasn't any kind of a contest, they just grabbed this showgirl out of one of the casinos and said, here, put on this bathing suit. 6:10 [SPEAKER_01]: We'll take a picture of you and it was done as just a photograph to use and advertise and they would do things like make up that they did that floating crap scheme photo that's one of the famous photos, which was just a made up thing they didn't have a floating crap scheme, but they made it up and then they would do something like that and air brush in. 6:36 [SPEAKER_01]: the atomic bomb blast in the background of the photo. 6:41 [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of those, they would just add in the abom or the nuclear cloud in the background. 6:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Or they would do ones where they would set up on news and I'd add it the site and do a live feed to the television, so that you could see it live on your television. 7:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And once in a while, they would miss Q and break a couple of windows in Vegas and they'd replace the windows for you. 7:10 [SPEAKER_01]: It was something that wasn't until really the mid-60s that you started getting people protesting out there. 7:20 [SPEAKER_01]: It was interesting how late it was before you started getting protests. 7:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And even there it was kind of interesting as a lot of times you would have 7:31 [SPEAKER_01]: wives on the protest line and husbands in buses going to work at the test site and it was just a was an interesting part of life and was kind of just part of life. 7:51 [SPEAKER_01]: because people had family members and not just scientists out there, but if you were in the trades, if you did construction, you did concrete, and you did electrical wiring, and you didn't any of that sort of thing. 8:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Nearly everyone ended up at some point working out at the test site. 8:12 [SPEAKER_01]: The real problem was if you had to drive out there, it was a two-lane road, and it was a blood alley. 8:20 [SPEAKER_01]: driving out there and driving back, because normally folks were just, they were driving stupid. 8:27 [SPEAKER_01]: They were driving 80, 90, 100 miles an hour, and you'd have to end up with coyotes or cattle on the road or stop at the nearest bar for a couple of drinks and then get back out on the road. 8:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And there are a lot of people that were killed just driving back for it. 8:47 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it was, 8:50 [SPEAKER_01]: It was another thing that could be advertised, so, down. 8:54 [SPEAKER_01]: We would do that. 9:00 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the most surprising things I learned on my last trip to Las Vegas was that the strip is not actually Las Vegas. 9:09 [SPEAKER_00]: When we refer to Vegas, we're almost always referring to the crowded strip of casinos and theaters right in the middle of town. 9:19 [SPEAKER_00]: That area is called Paradise Nevada. 9:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Paradise is at the center of Las Vegas, but it is not Las Vegas. 9:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked Mark to help me understand why this is the case. 9:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So the properties that started out on the strip, basically they're all in the county of Clark. 9:43 [SPEAKER_01]: They're not in the city of Las Vegas. 9:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And they are there because the taxes were lower. 9:52 [SPEAKER_01]: So the property was cheaper, taxes were lower. 9:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you bought property there, most of that property had the water rights that came with that property. 10:04 [SPEAKER_01]: So you could dig a well and bring up water at that point. 10:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of the properties like the boagil that has the water show there, that's a very shallow aquifer right there. 10:21 [SPEAKER_01]: So they reuse the water, that's right there. 10:24 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not the water that we can drink. 10:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's just reused, it just goes with the property there. 10:31 [SPEAKER_01]: But, 10:32 [SPEAKER_01]: that the Paradise Township Winchester Township Spring Valley Township, that Township Construct was created in the state legislature as a way of keeping it from being annexed. 10:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Initially the city didn't care. 10:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Their the city of Las Vegas is actually a fairly small area, the end of Vegas Valley. 10:56 [SPEAKER_01]: But when they saw the tax dollars that they weren't 11:01 [SPEAKER_01]: They said, oh, we'd like to take that away from the county and take those tax dollars. 11:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, the residents there didn't want to be part of the city. 11:13 [SPEAKER_01]: They had specifically gone into the county to be part of the county. 11:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And the county is a little over 8,000 square miles. 11:23 [SPEAKER_01]: it's a huge county. 11:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So they tried a number of times to annex the parts of the strip and the residents always said, no, we don't want that and they would try different some of them obvious things sometimes they would try a late addition to a city council meeting or 11:50 [SPEAKER_01]: political shenanigans sometimes and people would get very upset. 11:55 [SPEAKER_01]: So in order to keep that from happening, this construct of the unincorporated city, the unincorporated town site was created. 12:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was created in the state law so that it cannot be annexed. 12:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, yes, it says the town of paradise, but the town of paradise is part of the county of Clark. 12:23 [SPEAKER_01]: And it answers to the county commission. 12:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's Clark County. 12:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the funny things is you will often see the mayor of Las Vegas showing up at the welcome to Las Vegas side, which is in Clark County. 12:40 [SPEAKER_01]: And 12:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes they forget to tell the county commissioners, hey, we're going to go out into your territory and do something new, some kind of special event there. 12:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I get a little, we need to have a conversation here, guys. 13:00 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, that's all politics. 13:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's an interesting thing, because I ran the county museum system. 13:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And people would say, well, we need a museum of Las Vegas. 13:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, guys, we talk about Las Vegas. 13:16 [SPEAKER_01]: You're part of the county too. 13:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Trust me, I've talked about you. 13:22 [SPEAKER_01]: The county's been doing, or the city has been doing a series of documentaries. 13:28 [SPEAKER_01]: every 10 years, literally decade documentaries on Las Vegas, I've been in each one of them. 13:35 [SPEAKER_01]: I have done tours of the city for them. 13:39 [SPEAKER_01]: I have did. 13:39 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not something where your history, inset, or border, and it doesn't work that way. 13:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just kind of funny, and it's like, but we want it to, you don't need to have one everywhere. 13:56 [SPEAKER_01]: just add some money to the county museum and we can expand the exhibits. 14:01 [SPEAKER_01]: That'll work much more efficiently and you don't need to have another staff out there. 14:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I may have a point of view, too. 14:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Just in passing, I mentioned the name of BoxyCigl, the notorious gangster in connection with the flamingo hotel, which I thought Cigl had founded, 14:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Mark didn't have a lot to say about Bugsie, but I thought what he did say was funny, so I'm including it here. 14:33 [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't bugsy single, he was just a thug, and was really stupid, but he was a thug, so he took it away from Billy Walker's, and there was a bad gambler owed him money. 14:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And then he also skimmed money from his friends in the lock, as if he was a thug getting mug, and he got money from them, and then he skimmed, and did a bad job of opening yet, and got shot 15:04 [SPEAKER_00]: At the end of our conversation, Mark mentioned something I had never heard of before, but which took place in Clark County and Las Vegas. 15:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The world and door ons flight. 15:16 [SPEAKER_01]: The World Endurance Flight is the longest flight on record from start to stop. 15:22 [SPEAKER_01]: They took off on December 4th, 1958, landed on February 7th, 1959, flew 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and five seconds without touching ground. 15:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Took off from Macaron, landed at Macaron. 15:40 [SPEAKER_01]: I still call it my Karen, but yeah, and it's the longest flight ever made without touching ground. 15:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just an insane flight, I love the flight. 15:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, they refueled twice the day from a truck down on the road, and this was in the Session 172. 16:00 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what you've ever been in a system 172, but they don't have bathrooms, they don't have cooking facilities, they don't have any of that sort of thing, so all their food was handed up to them, water was handed up to them, it's like being inside a Volkswagen Beetle, the old Volkswagen Beetle. 16:23 [SPEAKER_01]: So you had just the pilot seat. 16:26 [SPEAKER_01]: You had two guys in it. 16:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Bob Tim was the main pilot in his idea. 16:31 [SPEAKER_01]: John Cook was his co-pilot. 16:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And you had to come down, parallel, the road, drop down a rope, 16:40 [SPEAKER_01]: pull up a hose, put it in the gas tank, they'd added a gas tank to the bottom of the plane, refill that, pump it out into the wing tanks, add oil to it once a day, and two courts boil as you took out and 16:56 [SPEAKER_01]: toss the oil filter every day. 16:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And so by the end of every third day, you change the oil, you had to use a little folding camp stool toilet with a plastic bag under it and throw that out the window when you got done with it. 17:14 [SPEAKER_01]: You had to stay steady for two and a half minutes. 17:17 [SPEAKER_01]: while you were refueling and the folks in the truck, you had one guy staring the truck, one guy sitting next to him, turned around with his head on the dashboard, looking up at the plane and handling the gas pedal with his hand. 17:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And you had to do this twice a day for basically 65 days. 17:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Their generator went out, so they lost their lights after a month, 17:47 [SPEAKER_01]: and broke the previous endurance flying record by just about 15 days. 17:53 [SPEAKER_01]: The previous one was 50 days, and nobody's broken it since then. 17:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So, and I knew that the pilot was dead by the time that I got here, I knew the copilot. 18:04 [SPEAKER_01]: I was actually a Paul Barron, his funeral. 18:07 [SPEAKER_01]: But he was just like, call this person and it's just like, yeah, we did it. 18:13 [SPEAKER_01]: It was fun, and it's like, you know, that's, and the first man made object to, to break that number was Skylab 2. 18:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So, but these guys just said, I'm going to do it Bob Tim decided to do it and broke the record and my estate didn't 18:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody's broken in sense. 18:39 [SPEAKER_01]: You will find it the Guinness Book World Records. 18:41 [SPEAKER_01]: You won't find it in the international flight records because they had decided that they weren't going to list any endurance flight records after 1939. 18:52 [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't want to encourage people to keep trying because they were worried about people getting injured. 19:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. 19:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you next week.
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