Masonry Magazine October 1984 Page. 8
MCAA MASONRY CONFERENCE
promises to revolutionize the traditional concepts of bidding a job and getting it. It is a vital new area of expertise in which every progressive mason contractor should be involved and knowledgeable about to manage his business successfully in the 80s and 90s.
Special Registration Required
The Pre-Conference Seminars are scheduled for Thursday and Friday, March 7th and 8th. They require special registration and are not part of the over-all Conference program. The registration fee are as follows: Masonry Systems Marketing-$95 for MCAA members and $155 for non-members. Each additional attendee from the same firm pays $75. Restoration-requires a flat fee of $50. The fees for Computer Estimating will be announced shortly.
So plan now to attend both the Pre-Conference Seminars and MCAA's 35th Anniversary Conference, March 7-12, at the Las Vegas Hilton. Attendance at both functions are sure to reap you maximum benefits. It's also a good idea to make your airline and hotel reservations now to avoid any last-minute foul-ups. Contact the MCAA Executive Office for information or to secure the proper reservation forms.
WATER: The Catalyst
That Made Las Vegas Bloom in the Desert
Legal gambling was the catalyst that transformed a dusty desert village known as Las Vegas into a world famous tourism mecca and the largest city in the nation formed in the twentieth century. But the opulent hotels, lavish shows and games of chance would never have blossomed in Las Vegas if it hadn't been for the ready availability of nature's most precious desert resource-water.
This year an estimated 12 million visitors will swim in it, fish in it, sail on it and drink it. Nearly 450,000 Las Vegans will cook with it, water lawns and parks with it, air condition homes with it and (odd as it may sound) revel in it during those rare days when it actually rains.
Water has shaped events in Las Vegas since its discovery by Spanish explorers in 1829. They named the valley "las vegas" in recognition of the lush meadows that were a welcome sight in the parched desert. Hundreds of similar valleys are found in the desert Southwest. But the significant difference between them and the Las Vegas valley is the aquifer, an underground rock stratum that provides water from natural springs.
Water is what brought an energetic group of Mormon settlers to Las Vegas in 1855 where they established a fort and cultivated 75 acres of meadowland. They departed two years later leaving behind their fields and the adobe fort, a portion of which still stands in downtown Las Vegas as the oldest building in Nevada.
The continuous history of Las Vegas also traces its roots to the artesian springs. In 1865 Octavius D. Gass, an Ohio native, began farming 800 acres-an area that covered all of downtown Las Vegas. Gass farmed the land until 1881 when he lost it to another 49er, Archibald Stewart, because he was unable to repay a $6,478 loan.
Stewart didn't enjoy his new property for long because in 1882 he was shot dead by a cowboy, leaving a pregnant wife and four children. But Helen Stewart was tough and the springwater continued to flow, and by the turn of the century she was farming 1,800 acres.
The water also brought Sen. William Clark to Las Vegas from Montana in 1902 when he purchased the Stewart ranch for $55,000. Clark needed Las Vegas' water to fulfill his dream of building a railroad connecting the Pacific Ocean with the Great Salt Lake. Clark's line was the San Pedro, Los Angeles, Salt Lake Railroad company which later became part of the Union Pacific. In those days the steam locomotives needed water and Las Vegas had the only artesian water between Milford, Utah and Los Angeles.
It was Clark's railroad that sparked the Las Vegas land boom that is still continuing. On May 15, 1905, on what is now a parking lot for the Union Plaza Hotel, the railroad held an auction for Las Vegas townsite lots. Investors braved 106-degree heat and paid up to $500 each for the lots-then an enormous price that netted Clark a cool $265,000. Upon many of those lots today sit glittering high-rise hotels and casinos.
The rampaging waters of the nearby Colorado River pulled Las Vegas from the depths of the Great Depression in the early 1930s when the federal government decided to build Boulder Dam-now Hoover Dam-in Black Canyon.