Southern California native and lifetime resident, landscape architect Chuck Degarmo evokes the Golden State's iconic theme park as he reflects on forty years in the landscape industry and the ways his work has shaped the way Southern Nevada looks and works. It is fitting he would do so. Degarmo forged his professional ties to Las Vegas in 1993, during the heyday of the Las Vegas Strip's "family-friendly" era, when Kirk Kerkorian's MGM Grand Hotel and Casino hired Degarmo's firm, Coast Landscape Construction, to design and landscape their planned 33-acre MGM Grand Adventures Theme Park. In this interview, Degarmo outlines his work history, which draws upon the combined skills of a salesman, an artisan, a problem-solver, and an entrepreneur. Having owned his own firms and worked for industry giants Valley Crest Companies and BrightView Landscape Development, he discusses an array of topics from running union and non-union crews; Tony Marnell and design-build projects; importing plant material into Nevada; the Neon Museum and Boneyard; The Smith Center for the Performing Arts and Symphony Park; Steve Wynn, the mountain at Wynn Las Vegas, and Lifescapes International; the Lucky Dragon; Cosmopolitan, CityCenter, and the Vdara "death ray", and the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act (SNPLMA). Throughout, Degarmo articulates his work through the lens of a lifetime Southern Californian whose talent has contributed much to the Southern Nevada landscape.

In twenty-first-century, urban America, Randall "Randy" Walker is one of the few fathers who can say he raised his children in the same house in which he grew up. Walker did not inherit the house at 443 Republic Street, in Henderson. Instead, Walker bought the house from his parents after he graduated from Brigham Young University in Utah, worked with Exxon Oil Company in Houston, returned to Southern Nevada to work in his first government job as a budget analyst for Clark County, and sold the house he previously owned. He did not have to move his wife and children far-their previous home was at 442 Republic Street, directly across from his parents. In this oral history, Walker shares why his family came to Henderson in 1952, describes growing up in the small town of his youth, and tells what it was like to have his father as his high school Spanish teacher. He focuses on his career in government and how he applied his accountant mindset to the various positions he held with Clark County, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the City of Las Vegas, and McCarran Airport. Along the way he shares his experiences with large governmental building projects such as the first 911 Call Center, the Downtown Transportation Center, the Regional Justice Center, and at McCarran Airport, the D v Gates, Terminal 3, and the airport tunnel and connector roads. He explains how his work with these various projects brought him into interaction with such diverse fields as architecture, accounting, construction, design, infrastructure, public art, public safety and local, state, and national politics. Throughout, Walker displays the collegial and common-sense approach to government, leadership, and problem solving that grounds the decisions he makes and explains why Richard Bunker wanted him at Clark County, why Clark County leaders recruited him to be county manager (and why that did not happen), and why McCarran Airport was able to accommodate without interruption Southern Nevada's record-breaking growth in residential and tourist traffic, and why, even in his absence, McCarran was the first major airport allowed to reopen following the 2001 September Eleventh terror attacks.

Newsbeat newsletter for October 1989