Dancer Charles Nur Fernald first came to Las Vegas in 1963 to perform for five weeks in the Kay Starr Show at the Sahara Hotel and again in 1964 working with Donn Arden for three months at the Desert Inn Hotel. Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1939, Charles moved several times to various places in Arizona and southern California with his parents, Charles Knox Fernald and Marguerite Marie Higgins Fernald, and half-siblings before settling in Hollywood, California, where he remained (except for his short stints in Las Vegas) from 1961 to 1967. In January 1968 Charles came to Las Vegas to perform with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca at the Flamingo Hotel. After the show closed Charles auditioned for Donn Arden to dance in the Lido de Paris show at the Stardust Hotel, where he remained for sixteen years, 1968 through 1984. He remains the only male dancer who performed with Lido through five different, consecutive productions. In 1969 Charles met his partner, Aquiles Garcia, who was a dancer at the Dunes Hotel. The couple remain in Las Vegas and have been together forty-five years. Charles’s father was very poor and left school after the third grade to go to work and help support his family. He was born in 1889 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the fifth of eleven children. As an eight-year-old he became a “groundhog,” a digger of New York’s underwater tunnels, who helped build the Holland Tunnel. At fifteen he made more money than his father selling newspapers, fresh fruit, and clothing door to door or from the street corner. According to Charles, his father “drank too much, ate too much, smoked too much, and loved too much.” As an only child, Charles’s mother had a very different upbringing from his father, although her family too was very poor. She was born in Detroit in 1902 to a railroad switchman father and mother who not only scrubbed the floors of wealthy Detroiters but also cooked meals for twenty-one boarders at a rooming house. Marguerite’s parents worked hard so they could send their only child to Catholic school and the Detroit Conservatory of Music.

Judy Bayley at a public event relating to the Trailrides at the Palomino Room at the Hacienda Hotel and Casino. The unidentified man standing behind Judy Bayley is wearing a badge that says "Judy Bayley's 4th Annual Las Vegas Hacienda Trail Ride Thru Paradise Valley 1971." "Participant" is stamped on the attached ribbon. Judith “Judy” Bayley, namesake of the Judy Bayley Theatre at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was once known as “The First Lady of Gambling.” Judy and her husband Warren “Doc” Bayley opened the Hacienda Hotel and Casino on October 17, 1956. After Warren’s unexpected death from a heart attack on December, 26, 1964, Judy Bayley took over the ownership and operations of the Hacienda. By doing so, she became the first woman in Nevada history to be the sole owner and operator of a hotel-casino. An avid horsewoman, as a publicity campaign, Judy started “The Hacienda Trailrides.” Which some considered the social event of the year. The first trailride was held in December, 1968 to commemorate Pearl Harbor. The ride began at the Valley of Fire State Park and Ended in Overton, Nevada. Judy donated all proceeds from the trailride to benefit the local Veterans of Foreign Wars. Four Trailrides were held over the next four years, leaving from Tule Springs (now Floyd Lamb State Park), and from the Hacienda itself before they were discontinued after her death. After Judy’s death from cancer on December 31, 1971, the Hacienda was sold in 1972. The Hacienda’s doors closed to the public on December 10, 1996. The hotel was imploded on December 31, 1996 on the 25th anniversary of Judy Bayley’s death, and was broadcast on the Fox news network as part of their New Year’s Eve 1996 telecast. In March 1999, it was replaced with the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.