Paul Szydelko
CNN's new four-part documentary, "Vegas: The Story of Sin City," is an excellent way for people to whet their appetite for a visit and learn about the city's history. And if they're interested in furthering their education, those visitors will find many excellent museums that skillfully delve into the world-famous destination.
I recently talked to one of the experts who appeared in that series, Geoff Schumacher, to get insight about the city's museum landscape. The former newspaperman has been an executive at the Mob Museum for 10 years, first as senior director of content and now as vice president of exhibits and programs. He is the author of two books, "Sun, Sin & Suburbia: A History of Modern Las Vegas" and "Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue." The conversation was edited for clarity and content:
Why is it important for Las Vegas to preserve its history?
The museums here really take pride in Las Vegas history. It's an interesting history. Not every city is as interesting as Las Vegas. There's a lot of great stories to tell. It's [also] an opportunity to build a sense of community. Almost everybody here is from somewhere else. If you are relatively new to town, you may not really understand how this place came to be in the desert. Whether it's our museum or the Neon Museum or the Clark County Museum or the Nevada State Museum, they all are attempting to orient people, whether they're tourists or locals, in what this place is all about.
Geoff Schumacher Photo Credit: National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement
Is there anything about the city's past that is often overlooked or underappreciated by visitors?
There's a perception that Bugsy Siegel invented Las Vegas in 1945 or something. But it's important to understand that there were settlers here in the 19th century and that the railroad really founded the town. Hundreds of cities and towns across the country were founded by the railroads, and Las Vegas is one of those, so we're not unlike other places. Hoover Dam (built in the 1930s) was a huge catalyst for growth, as was the legalization of gambling in 1931. Then there was this massive influx of people during World War II. This is important information, and it all happened before Bugsy Siegel ever showed up here.
Visitors come from places that are hundreds or even thousands of years old. Does Las Vegas' youth belie why it's important to regional and national history?
It really developed during the 20th century, while New York or Boston, places like that, date back to the 1600s. So Las Vegas' history is not taken perhaps as seriously that way. However, its impact on the culture is immense. And it's important to the growth of the American Southwest. It's important to the idea of entertainment as an industry, the idea of gambling as a mainstream activity. The fact that we were able to figure out water -- how to get water to this place on a massive scale, colonizing the desert in a way that only a few cities really figured out. It's really an amazing story on multiple levels: environmental, economic, cultural. Anybody who studies urban history in America and doesn't look at Las Vegas as part of that story is missing out.
Does the number and content of museums seem satisfactory?
We don't have an art museum, and that is something that's missing from the landscape, there's no question about that. There are opportunities for other museums, history and otherwise cultural, to be here; they haven't materialized yet. And so a lot of us who are here have tried to pick up on this in certain ways. So we have some entertainment incorporated into our exhibits as does the Nevada State Museum and the Clark County Museum. Gambling history could be a museum; We touch on that [at the Mob Museum].
The Tropicana will be imploded later this year. As a history buff, are you shedding any tears?
I got a little tour of the Tropicana last week. At a distance I was able to see the blocks of rooms which were built in 1957. Unfortunately, they have been gutted, and they're going to be torn down shortly. I didn't necessarily shed a tear literally, but I felt terrible about that. I feel like there could have been some opportunity to excise one or two of those rooms and somehow move those over to the Clark County Museum or something like that to preserve. It's probably unrealistic as a lot of history preservation can be, but I do feel bad about the Trop going down.
But I've also come to terms, as most people have, with the fact that the real estate on the Las Vegas Strip is of such high value. And the stakes are so high in terms of drawing tourists to Las Vegas, our golden goose, that it's almost like the Strip is a zone of its own, where history doesn't necessarily survive. There is preservation going on, but just not on the Strip corridor.