Engineer Edward "Ed" Butera spent hours constructing models from the time he was a five-year-old boy in San Jose, California. Besides his interest in building and design, the young Butera also loved math and music—specifically the clarinet, at which he excelled, and which he still enjoys. After earning his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at San Jose State University he was hired by Ralph Joeckel as a consulting engineer for Trane, a heating and air conditioning company. Joeckel became a mentor and "second dad" to Butera after the company sent him to Las Vegas in 1972, and the two remain close to this day. In this interview, Butera shares how he engineered and designed power, water, sanitation, utilities, and heating and cooling systems on many Clark County high schools, hospitals, and data centers while considering such factors as the building's shape and its affect on the way wind forces act on its glass, windows, and doors. He talks of his casino work that began with the Stardust soon after he arrived in Las Vegas, and before his client list grew to include Tony Marnell, Steve Wynn, and MGM. Besides the hotels, he shares his experiences engineering the infrastructure for the Bellagio fountains, The Mirage volcano, Treasure Island's pirate show.

One cannot talk about the arts in Southern Nevada without speaking of Patrick Gaffey. The Cincinnati, Ohio, native moved to Las Vegas as a child and has served the local arts community in several roles nearly his entire adult life, retiring soon after this interview as cultural program supervisor for the Clark County Parks & Recreation Department. After earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English at the University of Nevada, Reno, Gaffey married Cynthia Pearson in 1968. In 1981 he began working as a publicist for the Allied Arts Council of Southern Nevada, founding its acclaimed magazine, Arts Alive, and remaining with the organization through its several moves until 1991. In this interview, he speaks to the collaborative nature and long vision of the Southern Nevada arts and architecture community through the founding of Discovery Children's Museum and the Neon Museum and of working with farsighted public entities—the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, Clark County,

Henderson developer and Philadelphia native Richard MacDonald is a natural storyteller, and he has stories to tell. The man behind MacDonald Highlands and the Dragon Ridge Country Club first moved to Las Vegas as a young teen with his parents in 1959. After graduating Las Vegas High School in 1963, his parents moved to Hawaii and he enrolled at Nevada Southern University (now UNLV) and supported himself in Las Vegas by selling unfinished houses. His parents convinced him to move to Hawaii, where he attended the University of Hawaii worked with his father selling blocks of pre-developed cemetery lots to Asian buyers. In this interview, MacDonald describes his experience as a white man facing racial discrimination, of Las Vegas as Hawaii's Ninth Island, of earning his real estate broker's license, and of his father's plan to develop and sell Las Vegas property to Hawaiians. Returning to Las Vegas, MacDonald worked with Frank Sala and Chuck Ruthe to obtain his first two sections of Henderson land, which became Sun City MacDonald Ranch and the western part of MacDonald Highlands. He talks of developing Sunridge at MacDonald Ranch on Eastern Avenue and The Canyons at MacDonald Ranch. He also speaks to local prejudice against Hawaiians and to the way the City of Henderson favored Hank Greenspun and American Nevada Corporation. He recalls his twenty-year experience as a developer with the City of Henderson, its planning commission, city manager, city attorney, and city council. He reveals associations with Del Webb and the Del Webb CEO, Anthem, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Sultan of Brunei, and polo fields as well as Red Alerts, the Foothills project, and MacDonald Highlands. Along the way he talks of golf course architects and planners and the MacDonald Highlands golf course, his family, the Great Recession, and his current status with the City of Henderson and the Archaeological Institute of America.

Mike Montandon, former Arizonan and former three-term mayor of the City of North Las Vegas (1997-2009), is a natural storyteller. As he recalls municipal governance during a period of record-breaking growth, he talks of forming relationships with developers, legislators, and other municipalities; he speaks to land use, open space, parks, trails, conservation and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act (SNPLMA). He shares histories and stories of the Becker family's role in developing Clark County, of the Combs family's North Las Vegas pig farm; of the drama that routinely characterized BLM land auctions, and of why North Las Vegas spent millions of dollars to build its own sewage treatment plant. The guy who never ran for office in high school or college moved to North Las Vegas in 1992 and four years later was elected as mayor of one of the nation's fastest-growing cities. He ran because he realized the City was populated with people just l

Minnesotan Don Laughlin landed far from the land of (more than) 10,000 lakes. His office 90 miles south of Las Vegas in the eponymous town of Laughlin commands an unimpeded view of a very different landscape from that of his youth. Here, where the Colorado River flows south through one of its narrowest channels, Laughlin arrived in about 1966 and purchased what would become the Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino. The endeavor was so successful that the then-settlement of 10 to 15 people at that tiny spot on the river grew to be an unincorporated town housing more than 7,000 people in 2010. Today, Laughlin the man continues to promote and support Laughlin the town via flood control projects and infrastructure development. In this interview, Laughlin sits amid the antique slot machines in his office and enjoys the view as he recalls his childhood on the family farm in southern Minnesota, and talks about leaving the farm in the late 1940s for nearby Owatonna to do watchmaking and watch repairing while simultaneously running a slot machine and pinball parlor. After visiting Las Vegas on vacation, he arrived permanently in 1952 and bartended at the Thunderbird Hotel until he bought his own bar and restaurant in Downtown Las Vegas, which he named Laughlin’s Made Right Café. After selling the café, he bought the 101 Club in North Las Vegas. He began searching for a casino for a casino to buy, seeking only those located on the border of a state that did not allow gambling. When he found the small hotel/casino on the Colorado River he purchased it. He talks of building an airstrip across the street and making daily trips to Las Vegas to buy groceries, beer, and toilet paper-essentially, everything one would need to run a hotel, restaurant, and casino-sometimes making three trips in one day. He continues to own and manage his hotel/casino at the age of 85, and he is in his office every day, all day, seven days a week. He gave up flying last year because he claims he’s too old to pilot his own aircraft. So is especially advantageous that the town that bears his name can now supply almost everything that he and the Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino need.

The interior of the green house at the end of the cul-de-sac envelops the visitor. Every room exudes comfort and encourages conversation even as the lake, lapping quietly on three sides of the house, beckons. Cindy Coletti revels in this house and its interiors, all of her own design, especially because they are so different from the daring, opulent, and award-winning custom homes for which she is known. Arriving in Las Vegas in 1988 as a single mother, Cindy immediately submitted a successful design for the first Southern Nevada Street of Dreams event and began networking. She established Sun West Custom Homes in Nevada by applying the design and contracting skills she had successfully honed by building nearly seventy houses in California, Florida, and Colorado—all the while grooming her son Danny—from the time he was in his teens—to eventually take over the company. In this interview, Cindy's husband, David Fordham, shares his background, his reasons for relocating to Las Vegas, work in commercial real estate, meeting Cindy, and living at The Lakes. Cindy then recalls the experiences that brought her to Las Vegas; shaped her ideas of self-help, friendship, design, and business, and instilled in her the confidence to succeed in a man's world. Cindy has retired from building and now enjoys traveling with her husband, but Sun West Custom Homes continues to thrive under the capable ownership and leadership of Daniel S. Coletti.

On March 1st, 1981, Glorialyn Gutierrez interviewed Emily McKinley (b. April 28, 1930 in Las Vegas, Nevada) about her life in the Las Vegas Valley. McKinley begins by speaking about her childhood, her siblings and her extended family. McKinley gives a variety of anecdotes about being raised in Las Vegas, her family’s economic hardships and the house she grew up in. Lastly, McKinley talks about the businesses she owned with her husband, their hardships and her time working multiple jobs.