Hotel sales promotion manager Elmo Hughes Ellsworth was born in Safford, Arizona in 1911. He attended George Washington University Law School for a year until his job required him to move to San Francisco, California where he worked in sales promotion, publicity and theaters. He married Charlotte Rowberry in 1936 and a few years later they moved to the Las Vegas, Nevada. There he began working in the Security and Public Relations Department of the Basic Magnesium Company.
Notorious Western film villian Lee Van Cleef was born Clarence Leroy Van Cleef Jr. in Somerville, New Jersey to Marion Lavinia Gilbert Van Fleet and Clarence Leroy Van Cleef Sr. on January 9, 1925. Van Cleef attended Somerville High School before dropping out in order to elist in the United States Nacy in 1942. He worked as a sonarman on the U. S. S. Incredible in Mediterranean Sea, before moving to sweeping seabeds near Russia.
This is the history of Blue Diamond Village. Blue Diamond is located 26 miles southwest of Las Vegas. The village, originally known as Cottonwood Springs, changed its name when the Blue Diamond Company took ownership of the Gypsum mine and built corporate housing for the workers in the early '20s. Near the base of the Red Rock canyon, Blue Diamond Village was originally a stop on the Old Spanish Trail for traders from Santa Fe, N.M., to California between 1830 and 1848, according to the history committee's findings.
JMA (Jack Miller & Associates) was established by Jack Miller (1914-1999) in 1945 and is one of the oldest architectural firms in Las Vegas. Jack Miller came to Las Vegas in 1942 to assist in the design of the Basic Magnesium Plant in Henderson. As one of only a few architects working in Las Vegas after the war, Miller was able to establish a thriving practice designing all types of buildings: schools, residences, commercial and government buildings, hospitals and the original Stardust Hotel.
Harriett Thornton Hicks was born June 8, 1913,in Parowan, Utah; the thirteenth child of 14. She tells of her pioneer family who dwelled in two log cabins—one for cooking and one for sleeping. In 1931, she moved to Las Vegas to join two older sisters who had relocated here. She was picked up at the train by young Charles Hicks, who was a friend of her sisters. Charles had a car and offered to provide transportation. Within three years, the two were married. She quit her drug store job to raise a family and he worked for the railroad, the only business at the time in Las Vegas. At the age of 96, Harriett recalls a range of community milestones, such as the Boulder Dam, the news of Pearl Harbor bombing, Fremont Street, the Biltmore Hotel, and how to live in a city with mob influences.