The Preservation Association of Clark County Photograph Collection consists of five black-and-white photographic prints and negatives from approximately 1980. Images depict scenes from the preservation process of the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort as well as images of members of the Preservation Association of Clark County, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries, and Nevada government officials in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Levi Walter Syphus Papers date from 1889 to 1930 and document the activities of Levi Walter Syphus (1866-1949), a southern Nevada pioneer and state legislator. The collection contains a financial ledger, meeting minutes of the Board of Control of the Lincoln County Experiment Farm, and records of experiments in refining magnesite.
Steve Casey is the oldest of three children born to Peggy and Walt Casey. Born in Portland, Oregon, Steve arrived in Las Vegas in 1951 as a three-year-old via Glendora, California. His childhood memories are of small-town Las Vegas. He grew up near Tropicana Avenue and Eastern Avenue in a house his parents built by hand. The Casey family lived beyond municipal roads, so Steve worked his newspaper route by horse and occasionally rode his horse to Paradise Elementary School.
Treva Roles was born March 10, 1928 to Louis and Katherine Smith, and spent her childhood in Erie, Pennsylvania and Chicago, Illinois with five other siblings. During the Great Depression, Roles’s father used his entrepreneurial skills to turn his traveling salesman profession into a family business, selling personal inventions. Eventually, he decided to sell the business, and buy a motel out west to retire. The motel ended up being the Fair Price Motel in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Roles soon moved out to help the family run it.
Billy Paul Smith was born in 1942 and educated in segregated black schools in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Texarkana, Texas. He graduated from high school at fifteen and enrolled at Prairie View A&M University, where he trained with the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). He earned his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry and in 1964, his Master’s degrees in chemistry and math. Smith’s math and science background steered him to the United States Army Chemical Corps, where he was quickly selected to join a new team.
Louis Wiener, Jr. was born on March 28, 1915 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1931 and graduated from Las Vegas High School in 1932. He attended the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley School of Law. When Wiener was admitted to the Clark County Bar Association, there were only 16 other attorneys in Las Vegas.
In 1965, Chilean-born Mariteresa Rivera-Rogers (b. 1943) and husband Enrique Rivera set out on their adventurous leap and moved to the United States. Sponsored by an aunt living in Las Vegas, their resident visas took only three months to process—a task that would take years in today’s world she explains. Their first home was on Convention Center Drive, though they and their four children would experience several different neighborhoods over the years.