upr000096 22

Tourist Trade: The following- analysis of tourist revenue was issued by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce under date of July 31, 1953: Number No. of Employees No. of Accommodations Estimated Value Persons Housed A n n u a lly Estimated Tourist Sp e n din g* Resort H otels......................... 7 3,850 1,826 $ 47,476,000 1,599,785 $ 26,243,683 Commercial H otels............... 31 510 1,147 6,882,000 942,065 9,420,650 Motels................................... . 219 1,095 4,009 36,081,000 3,292,300 32,923,000 Trailer Parks........................ 43 215 4,300 12,900,000 3,383,750 33,837,500 300 5,670 11,282 $103,339,000 9,217,900 $102,424,833 * Exclusive of gambling and drinking. Estimated gross revenue to gaming casinos: $43,000,000; to bars: $18,435,800. The table above includes population of a semi-permanent character; most of the trailer park population and some of the motel population is of this type. Located along a 5-mile section of Highway 91, just outside and southerly of Las Vegas, are seven multi-million dollar resort hotels conservatively evaluated at $47,476,000. The combined annual payroll of the seven hotels alone is $21,278,750. This does not include the 31 other hotels and 219 motels in the area. All of these seven hotels have been built since 1942, starting w ith the E l Rancho Vegas. The El Rancho was followed by the Hotel Last Frontier, Hotel Flamingo, H otel Thunderbird, W ilbur Clark’s D esert Inn, Hotel Sahara and The Sands, the latter at a cost of $5,000,000. The last two hotels were both opened in 1952. Final plans are being made for the construction of three more multi-million dollar hotels. An estimated 10 additional motels (5 of which are already under construction) will be built in 1954. In addition, all of the hotels are constantly expanding their room facilities and making other improvements. An example is the Hotel Flam ingo which last month completed a redecoration of its main building at a cost of $1,000,000. Each one of the hotels have, in addition to their guest rooms and cottages, a large central building, shops, gambling casinos, at least two cocktail lounges, and Olympic size swimming pools. Local radio stations are located in three of the hotels. The D esert Inn has an 18-hole golf course in addition to its main plant. A t present there are 1,826 rooms in the seven resort hotels. W ith an estimated $200,000 a week expenditure on entertainm ent alone, the resort hotels offer floor shows and name entertainers on an equal par w ith New York. O utstanding stars are attracted from all over the country. Salaries for individual star entertainers range from $10,000 to $30,000 a week. This does not include the salaries for other acts in the same show. The shows change on the average of every two weeks, thus bringing in a constant new source of talent and revenue. The high quality of this entertainm ent is a m ajor tourist attraction. Industry: The principal industrial area in the D istrict is the two-square-mile former Basic Magnesium, Inc. plant at Henderson (12 miles southeast of Las Vegas via U. S. H ighw ay 93 — 95 — 466). Basic Magnesium, Inc. (B.M .I.), was constructed by Defense Plant Corp. in 1941-42 at an outlay of approximately $140,000,000. The plant was a giant duplicate of plants at M anchester, England and Bitterfeld, Germany, and contained ten plant units, each nearly a block long and four stories high. A w ater supply system from Lake Mead was constructed and two electric power trans­mission lines were strung from Hoover Dam, 15 miles away. In 1945 the plant became surplus and in 1948 was purchased by the State of Nevada. The W ar Assets A dm inistration’s price was $24,000,000, to be paid w ithout interest over a 20-year period. By 1951 the State had paid about $6,000,000 of the original purchase price. In May, 1952, the 10 plant units were sold or leased with options to purchase to five m ajor com panies: N ational Lead Company, Stauffer Chemical Company of Nevada, W estern Electrochemical Company, Com­bined Metals Reduction Company and U. S. Lime Products Corporation. Common facilities, such as the water, power and sewer systems, roads, railroad tracks and other general facilities, and the townsite of Henderson were sold to a new B.M.I. — Basic M anagement, Inc. — a corporation wholly owned by the five m ajor companies. The five companies and B.M.I. assumed the $18,000,000 balance of the purchase price under contracts which allowed them to purchase their individual units outright or to continue to apply rentals to their purchases. B.M.I. is owned and controlled by the five companies. 5 The B.M.I. layout contains upwards of 155 buildings, w ith a total floor space of about 3,314,335 square feet. The area is served by a netw ork of rail sidings from a Union Pacific branch line and by a four-lane highway. B.M.I. currently has a payroll of 2,100 persons. The B.M.I. group of industries are of a perm anent nature. They have acquired valuable properties for their capital investments, are well located w ith respect to raw materials, and have relatively low expenses. Stauffer Chemical, operating six full chlorine circuits, is one of the world’s largest producers of chlorine. Pioche M anganese Company is operating in the units acquired by Combined M etals and produces ferromanganese for use as a steel alloy. U. S. Lime Products (which has a supply plant a few miles southw est of the D istrict) supplies flux for a m ajor part of the W est Coast steel industry. Titanium Metals and W estern Electrochemical are operating under a security blanket. Titanium Metals Corp., a subsidiary of National Lead Company and Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corp., is operating in the units acquired by N ational Lead. Titanium M etals also is getting a new $11,000,000 plant which will increase the world production of titanium eight times. W estern Electrochemical is m anufacturing guided missile and jet-assisted-take-off fuels in a new $4,000,000 plant built by the U. S. Navy. The expansion program at B.M.I. totals $25,000,000, not including the construction of 2,000 new homes in the city of Henderson. In Las Vegas itself the Union Pacific Railroad is the largest employer, w ith about 700 persons employed in its division headquarters, shops and classification yards. O ther industries in the city include the Cinder-lite Block Company and several other construction and building materials plants, and a sizable m eat packing plant. W arehousing is also fairly im portant, both from Las V egas’ position as a distribution center for most of southern Nevada and because it is a point of entry to California, w ith stored goods escaping California ad valorem taxes. The Union Pacific Railroad reports carloadings for the Las Vegas Basin in 1953 as 29,936 carloads forwarded (82 per day average) and 8,787 received. The Nellis Air Force Base, located approxim ately 8 miles northeasterly of Las Vegas, is an Air Force school and one of the busiest airfields in the world. There are more than 30,000 takeoffs and landings per month—one every 30 seconds during a flying day. The purpose of the Base is to give fighter pilots final combat training in jet aircraft. All pilot candidates have previously received flight training. They are graduates of m ilitary flight schools, senior Air Force officers, and foreign pilots of countries in the M utual Defense Assistance program. In -short, the function of Nellis is to teach a qualified pilot to use a jet fighter as a weapon of combat. Nellis AFB has been classified by the D epartm ent of Defense as a perm anent military installation. Comprehensive statistics are not available by reason of m ilitary security. However, its operation is estimated to involve an expenditure of about $30,000,000 annually. It employs approxim ately 500 civilians with an annual payroll of about $2,000,000 and has about 4,000 m ilitary personnel w ith a payroll of about $10,000,000 annually. Supply, service and construction contracts let in the Las Vegas area have recently amounted to about $600,000 annually. Nearly half of the m ilitary personnel are m arried and most of these reside with their families in the Las Vegas area. Although many of the m ilitary families live in the housing projects provided near Nellis, substantial numbers live in Las Vegas residential areas. N ear to the A ir Force Base, the Navy has an estimated $9,000,000 installation under construc­tion. This is the Lake Mead Naval Ammunition Depot which will provide ammunition storage. It is expected that this facility will require about 100 civilian employees and 900 m ilitary personnel, with payrolls in proportion. Agriculture: A gricultural development is relatively small, although the growing season is long and the winters mild. The scarcity of w ater may have been the impeding factor. Only about 37,500 acres would be rated suitable for agriculture if alkali and drainage conditions were favorable. The total am ount of land under irrigation either for farm ing or for grazing, is less than 5,000 acres. It has been estimated th at the same land areas have been under irrigated cultivation since 1912. Total persons in agricultural occupations in Clark County in 1950 was only 514 (3% of total employed population). Occupation Statistics, 1950: The following table on occupation characteristics of Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas, N orth Las Vegas, and Henderson is based on data from the 1950 census. Growth since 1950 has been substantial, so in many instances the 1950 figures may no longer be representative. 6