The memories and recollections of Alice Thiriot Ballard Waite provide a most interesting look at both at the Junior League of Las Vegas in the 1970s and the early days of Las Vegas. Alice recalls her childhood and young adult years after she arrived in Las Vegas at the age of five, giving the reader a rare picture of Las Vegas in the 1950s and 1960s. She was most active in the volunteer community of Las Vegas and served as Junior League President in 1964-5. Her reminiscences about the events and activities during the years while she was a Junior League member are an invaluable insight into its history. The exhibits she is sharing are an important documentation of those years after the Service League became the Junior League. She herself was a forerunner of today's Active members because she was a single, working mother while serving as the first "professional" President of the League.
John Lytle (left) and Sherman "Scoop" Garside (right) at Emigrant (Fremont) Gap on the Old Spanish Trail. Emigrant Gap is a gap in a ridge on the California Trail as it crosses the Sierra Nevada, to the west of what is now known as Donner Pass. Here the cliffs are so steep that, back in the 1840s, the pioneers on their way to California had to lower their wagons on ropes in order to continue. The first official effort to mark the Old Spanish Trail across Nevada took place in 1964 when the Governor of Nevada asked Sherwin "Scoop" Garside to design and implement a Centennial project to help commemorate the Silver State's 100th birthday. Garside proposed that an appropriate Centennial project would be to mark the trace of the Old Spanish Trail across southern Nevada. The Governor concurred and directed the Nevada State government to cooperate in the project. Garside and his associate John Lytle brought together a group of friends and supporters to help fund and fabricate the white concrete posts that were used to mark the trace of the Old Spanish Trail across the state. Members of an affiliate of the local Boy Scouts of America Council helped erect thirty-three of these markers across the Mojave Desert in southern Nevada and Eastern California. The markers are inscribed with the legend "The Old Spanish Trail, 1829-1855." There are four Old Spanish Trail Historical Markers located in Nevada. One is located on U. S. 91 in Mesquite, the second is located in Fantasy Park, 1/4 mile east of Las Vegas Boulevard, North and Washington Avenue in Las Vegas, the third is located at Town Center in Blue Diamond, and the fourth is located on State 16 at Mountain Springs Summit. In 2001, the section of the Trail that runs across Nevada from the Arizona border to California (known as the "Old Spanish Trail-Mormon Road Historic District") was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.