I was fortunate to be able to receive a copy of Historic Photos of Las Vegas from Turner Publishing. It’s a beautiful hardcover book with a very full 200 pages.

This isn’t a textbook – it’s chock full of pictures and captions and very few of them are ones I’ve seen before and both I and my daughters were fascinated – we kept looking up areas online that were mentioned in the book so we could compare them with what they look like now (a pre-Strip Flamingo hotel is especially noteworthy). The earliest picture dates back to 1905 and the most recent to the 1950’s. It’s amazing to be reminded that such a large, flashy city started out like any other, with canvas tents and clapboards.

If you’re a contemporary history buff I highly recommend this book, and Turner Publishing has an amazing selection of other major US cities as well.

The pictures come from the Special Collections at the University of Nevada Las Vegas Library, as well as individual contributions. Text and captions are by Jeff Burbank.

Post from: The Las Vegas Adventurer