The Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) Corporate Records (1914-2000) document the history of the Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) and is comprised of photographs of sign production and finished signs, negatives, slides, transparencies, anniversary scrapbooks, and videotapes. The collection also contains meeting minutes, correspondence, price books, drawings, calculations, newspaper and trade magazine articles on YESCO, advertising materials, and oral history interviews and audio recordings of YESCO designers and executives. YESCO is responsible for many of the neon signs in and around Las Vegas, Nevada and Reno, Nevada, as well as other Western states.
The Leprechaun Mining and Chemical, Inc. Records from 1954 to 1998 contain business information, Foot Chemical Company partnership documentation, meetings, audit and investment reports, financial papers, and stock certificates and transfers. Also included is data on the minerals mined in Nevada, such as salt, potash, and lithium.
Oral history interview with Cindy Baca conducted by Barbara Tabach on May 22, 2019 for the Remembering 1 October Oral History Project. Cindy Baca, born and raised in Las Vegas, talks about her family and occupation as a librarian at Escobedo Middle School. Cindy's twin daughters were present and injured during the Route 91 Festival and October 1 shooting. She describes their experiences and the Random Acts of Kindness project she piloted at her school after the incident.
Sandra Peña’s story begins in East Los Angeles, where she spent her first fifteen years with her parents (both from Michoacán, Mexico), and her younger sister. The father's managerial position at Master Products allowed the family to live rent-free in a company-owned house behind the main factory, because he collected the rents for the company's two other dwellings. In this interview, Peña recalls the family move to Porterville, in California's Central Valley, her return to Los Angeles at nineteen, and her work with Parson’s Dillingham, a contractor for the Metrolink rail system. She draws the link between the Los Angeles and Las Vegas construction communities by describing her husband's move to Las Vegas to find work; a chance Las Vegas encounter with a friend from Chino, California; her ability to gain employment in Las Vegas at Parson’s, a company that had joint ventured with Parson’s Dillingham, and her move from there to Richardson Construction, a local minority-owned company. As Peña says, "It's kind of all intermingled. Even if you go here and you go there, it's like everybody knows everybody." Throughout, Peña weaves her family story into the narrative as she describes her youth, the birth of her son, the illness and death of her father, and her family's participation in her current employment with Richardson. As she remembers the people, places, and events of her life, Peña speaks to the ways one woman of color built on her interstate construction connections and rose in a male-dominated industry.
The Southern Nevada Historical Society Photograph Collection on Basic Magnesium, Inc. contains photographs of the construction of Basic Magnesium Inc.'s plants and buildings from 1941 to 1942. The photographs primarily depict aerial views of the plant site and various buildings, including the administration building, tent camp, chlorination buildings, electrolysis facilities, electrical distribution systems, and warehouses. The photographs also depict Lake Mead and the early buildings in Henderson, Nevada.
The John Wittwer Collection on Agriculture in Nevada (1898-1972) contains the professional papers and records of John Wittwer in his capacity as an Agricultural Extension agent for the University of Nevada from 1921 to 1954. The records are primarily annual reports containing text, photographs, newspaper clippings, and charts that provide a rich chronicle of the conditions of agriculture and ranching in southern Nevada from 1898 to 1972, with the bulk of the material dating from 1929 to 1955. These conditions span water issues, such as flood control and irrigation, to the general difficulties of sustaining agriculture and viable food production in a desert environment. The reports come from the Agricultural Experiment Stations in Clark and Lincoln counties and most contain both a statistical report and a narrative summary.