“I came out from Michigan driving a ’57 Ford pulling a U-haul trailer. I crossed Hoover Dam on Friday night of Labor Day weekend 1961.  All I could see in front of me were red taillights.  I thought, where are all these people going?” 

- Laura Zook, Las Vegas resident since 1961

The Women Who Built Las Vegas: a four part series

Episode One
The Women Who Built Las Vegas : The Pioneering Women

In this first hour long episode, historians and descendants introduce us to the very first women to make Las Vegas a real town. Some of the highlights include the story of widow and rancher Helen J. Stewart, who sells some of her land to the railroad to create the town while also preserving land for a reservation for her longtime friends, the local Paiute Indians. We examine the careers of pioneering businesswomen including Miss Pearl Hewetson who single-handedly manages a civic government and is made the first Postmaster, and Martha Parks who opens the first funeral parlor in Las Vegas, a business that is still thriving today. And, hinting towards the industry to come, Mayme Stocker secures the first legally-licensed casino in town to keep her family businesses legal. These are only some of the life stories we will explore. Many will be surprised how influential these unsung pioneering women have been in the Vegas of today.

Episode Two
The Women Who Built Las Vegas : The Women of Change

Creating a town, these women create a civic infrastructure and keep the town alive through the boom and bust cycles of building Hoover Dam and two World Wars. They are truly women of change, like Delphina Squires who with her husband, creates the first community newspaper. In the following decade, Laura Belle Kelch helps bring radio to the desert and then helps create the Live Wire fund that finances the Las Vegas News Bureau. The News Bureau helps create an iconic image of Las Vegas as a tourist destination. Helen Cannon and Florence Murphy speak of flying in defense of their country. Peg Crockett talks of how she and her husband created Alamo Airways which helped bring a curious nation to Las Vegas. Florence Jones Cahlan becomes the first female hard news reporter and local historian. These are only a few of the stories we will tell. These civic pioneering women helped build the foundation of the fastest growing city in the world. 

Episode Three
The Women Who Built Las Vegas : The Entertaining Women

Taking an unusual turn on the Entertainment Capital of the World, we focus on the work-a-day lives of the showgirls, singers, entertainers and women behind the scenes that gave Las Vegas its unique status in entertainment history. Lorraine Hunt graduates from Las Vegas High and builds her career singing in the casinos with Sinatra. Rosemary Tall Dehart, an English schoolgirl recruited to Paris's Blue Bell Dancers comes to Las Vegas and never goes home. Anna Bailey, a Moulin Rouge dancer, shares her experiences with segregation and her evolution into a social activist. Fluff LeCouque, dancer and protégé of Donn Arden, the man who changed the way the world thought of Vegas entertainment, is still choreographing on the strip four decades later.

Episode Four
The Women Who Built Las Vegas : The Self-Made Women

This final episode places a special emphasis on the contributions of the most recent generation of Las Vegas women in business and politics. Jan Jones becomes the town's first female mayor, and more recently, a director of Harrahs Entertainment. Lorraine Hunt, a local girl who sings in the casinos, buys property, becomes involved in local politics and works her way up to become the current Lieutenant Governor of Nevada. Thalia Dondero, a mom, becomes the first woman Commissioner on the County Board of Commissioners, the most powerful political organization controlling the Las Vegas Strip. Ann Small works for the agent that booked every hotel showroom in town, puts herself through law school and is now a presiding judge. Edythe Katz Yarchever who, with her husband, leads the desegregation of motion picture theaters in the sixties and goes on to create the Las Vegas Holocaust Museum and Library. There are many more enduring stories that we will reveal for the first time anywhere, in this series.

With the contributions of women from every level of Las Vegas society, we hope to dispel the years of promotional myths and legends and reveal a more dramatic and enduring truth; the significance of real lives in an unparalleled environment.

"I wouldn't trade it for growing up anywhere else in the world..."

-Myrna Kingham, born in Las Vegas in 1948