With close to 650,000 residents (as of 2021), Las Vegas is the nation’s 25th-largest city. But in 1939, when Union Pacific issued this brochure, it had barely 8,000 residents, making it “still a frontier town,” according to this brochure. The completion of Boulder/Hoover dam just three years before (along with the invention of air conditioning) enabled the city to rapidly grow into one of the nation’s leading entertainment centers.
Click image to download a 19.6-MB PDF of this brochure, which is from the David Rumsey Map Collection.
The colorful map in this brochure includes cute pictures of yellow Union Pacific streamliners, a couple getting a divorce at the Clark County Courthouse, and even a scantily clad woman enticing a man to enter her doorway over which is mounted a red light. The map barely hints at casinos or gambling but instead focuses more on natural resources such as Red Rock Canyon, Death Valley, Zion, and of course Boulder Dam. Similarly, the photo collage on the back has one picture of a roulette table and 18 of scenery, a rodeo, and the dam.
The map and cover art are signed Raymond Winters, who was born in Denver in 1892 and moved to Los Angeles in 1915. As an artist, he often illustrated the covers of Westway magazine, which then as now was published by the Automobile Club of Southern California. Sadly, he died in 1939, the same year this brochure was published.
Interestingly enough I don’t think prostitution was or is legal in Clark County. It’s my understanding you have to go out to Nye County (i.e. Pahrump) for that kind of entertainment.
Meant to reply to your comment; please see mine below.
When this was published, it was so openly tolerated that the pictures wouldn’t have raised eyebrows. That changed a few years later during WWII. Since then it’s been illegal in Las Vegas, though the world’s oldest profession is far from endangered. Read on.
Source: https://nevadabrothelassociation.com/
“Despite there being a legal option, the vast majority of prostitution in Nevada takes place illegally in Reno and Las Vegas. About 66 times more money is spent by customers on illegal prostitution in Nevada than in the regulated brothels.
“Brothels have been allowed in Nevada since the middle of the 19th century.
“In 1937, a law was enacted to require weekly health checks of all prostitutes. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order to suppress prostitution near military bases — affecting the red-light districts of Reno and Las Vegas.
“When this order was lifted in 1948, Reno officials tried to shut down a brothel as a public nuisance; this action was upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court in 1949.
“In 1951, both Reno and Las Vegas had closed their red-light districts as public nuisances, but brothels continued to exist throughout the state.”