The K. O. Knudson Photographs (approximately 1920-1969) depict the Las Vegas Grammar School and service, fraternal, and veterans organizations gathered by retired Las Vegas, Nevada school administrator and World War I veteran K. O. Knudson (also known as K. Oscar Knudson). The collection includes images of Knudson, Las Vegas Masonic Lodge members, American Legion members, and school dances. The photographs primarily feature Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Emily Higby Powell Photograph Album (approximately 1910-1920) contains black-and-white photographs taken by Emily Higby Powell on a trip from New York to the west coast. The images depict desert landscape throughout the Southwest, including Northern Nevada, as well as images taken on Lake Champlain in Essex, New York.
The Edith Giles Barcus Family Photograph Collection (approximately 1878-1954) consists of black-and-white photographic prints and negatives, as well as postcards and photograph albums. The images depict locations in Nevada including Las Vegas, Goldfield, Searchlight, and Tonopah, in addition to locations in Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Utah, and Mexico. Also included are images of family, friends, and associates of the Giles Barcus family. The albums contain photographs depicting the Giles family as they traveled through the southwest United States and Mexico, as well as postcards from prominent locations in the southwestern United States.
The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Records (approximately 1950-2008) consist of oral histories collected by University of Nevada, Las Vegas Department of History for the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project. The collection includes digital audio recordings of interviews, print and digital transcripts, and a small selection of digital video recordings. Some interviews have also been supplemented with photographs, letters, scientific articles, brochures, news clippings and ephemera about the Nevada Test Site.
Jillian Hrushowy arrived in Las Vegas in 1959 as part of a company hired to appear at the El Rancho Vegas Hotel in a production called La Nouvelle Eve. She has remained here (other than three short-term contracts in Reno, Nevada) until present day. She is now the production manager for Legends in Concert at the Imperial Palace Hotel. She was an only child, born in Rhodesia to English parents and raised in a home with servants and tutors. Her mother exposed her to the arts at an early age. Jillian took dancing lessons from the age of three years until she began dancing professionally. When she was fifteen years old, both parents agreed it was time for her to leave Rhodesia and finish her education in England. Living alone was difficult and lonely, but it afforded her a wealth of opportunities otherwise unavailable. She worked as a dancer in small, local productions while still in high school. When only eighteen, she got a job dancing in La Nouvelle Eve in Paris which eventually came to Las Vegas. This interview focuses on the years from Jillian’s arrival in 1959 until she retired from dancing in 1979. It follows her transitions from dancer, to principal dancer to production manager. [The first twenty minutes of the tape is warped and the text is garbled. The transcriber has lightly edited the transcript.]