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Interview with William John Mayer, July 20, 2004
Date
2004-07-20
Archival Collection
Description
Narrator affiliation: Electrical Engineer; Los Alamos National Laboratory
Text
Transcript of interview with Gilbert D. Yarchever by Claytee White, 2006
Date
2006-04-03
Archival Collection
Description
Gilbert Yarchever was one of nine siblings, born and bred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He describes the way his mother?s family was granted the last name of ?Kurfeersf" by Emperor Franz Joseph (of Austria-Hungary), explains the Seder (the Jewish observation of the exodus of Hebrews from Egypt), and tells what it was like to survive the Depression. Gilbert describes the jobs he held after high school and the government examination he took that led to his lifetime of adventure and travel. He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1940 and kept himself busy working for the government and taking classes at George Washington University, as well as working part time at Hecht Department Store and as a freelance court reporter. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Gilbert was sent to Africa on a merchant ship, helped smuggle Jewish survivors into Jerusalem, and was assigned the task of negotiating with Arab sheikhs for laborers to build a road. In the years after that, he worked in Europe, Panama, Alaska, Japan, and Hawaii and describes many of the jobs he was responsible for and many of the individuals he met. He also married and had children, kept up with university classes whenever he could, and collected art objects and paintings. Following his retirement in 1977, Gilbert and his family came to Las Vegas and bought a condo in Regency Towers. He did some consulting work for a couple of years, and then he and his wife began traveling around the states and going abroad. He was involved with UNLV?s EXCEL program, the music department, and the Las Vegas Art Museum. (He and his second wife Edythe presented the first major exhibition on Holocaust art at the museum.) These days Gilbert often donates pieces from his art collection to churches, synagogues, and charitable organizations.
Gilbert Yarchever was in the Navy during World War II, helped smuggle Jewish refugees into Jerusalem, worked as a civil servant in many countries, and moved to Las Vegas in 1977. He helped found the EXCEL program at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and was an art collector with his wife, Edythe Katz-Yarchever.
Text
Photograph of the front exterior of the Hotel Nevada (Las Vegas), circa 1910
Date
1908 to 1912
Archival Collection
Description
Hotel Nevada after the addition of a balcony. Transcribed from photo sleeve: "by Florence Lee Jones ... March, 1969. Early Las Vegas History. The Hotel Nevada, at the Southeast corner of Main and Fremont Streets, is the oldest continuous hotel business in Las Vegas, although it has been known as Sal Sagev (Las Vegas spelled backward) since 1928. The hostelry started as a tent in 1905, but the late John Miller soon erected a permanent building, shown above, which provided the most luxurious accommodations and the best food in Las Vegas for many years. In the 1930's the Sal Sagev Hotel had one of the three elevators in town. A private dining room was a popular place for private parties for the elite of the town. The hotel is now owned and operated by Miller's son, Abe Miller, and his daughter, Mrs. Sherman E. Nugent. The Golden Gate Club now occupies much of the first floor of the building. On the North side of the building is a sign "Bank of Southern Nevada", which was the second bank established in Las Vegas. (The other was the First State Bank.) Started by John F. Miller, Ed Von Tobel, Sr., Will Beckley, Attorney Frank Stevens, and Hal D. Buzick, the Bank of Southern Nevada was an important factor in Southern Nevada's economy. During the 1930's and the Depression, the federal government issued restrictive orders on bank operations. The reaction of the independent Las Vegans was 'No guy in Washington is going to tell us how to run our bank.' ... So they paid off all the depositors and closed the bank. The Rhoads & Rhoads General Machine Works (extreme right) was one of the first automobile agencies in town - the start of Community Chevrolet."
Site Name: Hotel Nevada
Address: 1 Fremont Street
Image
Sadie and Hampton George Papers
Identifier
MS-00434
Abstract
The Sadie and Hampton George Papers (1874-1948) consist primarily of the incoming and outgoing correspondence of Sadie Kiel George and her husband, Hampton George, regarding proposed land and mineral rights sales. The collection also includes some personal correspondence, and two of the most significant letters in the collection deal with the deaths of brothers William and Edward Kiel, Sadie's uncles, who were found dead at the Kiel Ranch in October 1900. Also included in the collection are receipts, cancelled checks, tax notices, mining claims, and land deeds.
Archival Collection
Tonopah, Nevada Mining Town Photograph Album
Identifier
PH-00411
Abstract
The Tonopah, Nevada Mining Town Photograph Album (approximately 1908) consists of twenty-two photographs in a leather-bound album. The photographs depict businesses, townspeople, street scenes, and mining operations in Tonopah, Nevada and the surrounding areas of Goldfield, Nevada and Mina, Nevada. Also included are photographs of a fire on May 12, 1908 that destroyed a block of commercial buildings in Tonopah, which were taken by local photographer E. W. Smith., and views of the downtown area both before and after the fire.
Archival Collection