Dennis McBride grew up in Boulder City, Nevada, and received both his BA and MA from UNLV. He is well-known as an expert in the history of Hoover Dam and has done several histories of Boulder City. He has chronicled and collected the history of the LGBTQ community in Las Vegas since the late 1970s, and his work culminated in the manuscript "Life in the Neon Closet: A History of Gay Las Vegas" published in 2017.

Alfred Parkinson and Fred Schoonmaker were a couple who moved to a ghost town in Rhyolite, Nevada and attempted to create a gay residential area called Stonewall Park.

Lera, Bridget. “Queer Cities and Their Temporary Monuments.” Nevada Humanities. Nevada Humanities, September 10, 2020. https://www.nevadahumanities.org/blog/2020/9/9/queer-cities-and-their-temporary-monuments.

Entertainer Will Collins founded the Gay Academic Union [GAU] at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Collins is renowned today as the world's best Liberace impersonator. Collins came to Las Vegas in 1982 from Arizona State University in Tempe to pursue a degree in business. Dacoda Clayton Collins is Will Collins' child.