Not Bad: Two Centennials in One Year

Call it the harrumph heard 'round the world -- or at least throughout the valley.

Ink-stained curmudgeons and well-starched academics these days agree on one thing: Today's official celebration of the Clark County centennial is either one too many or one too late for the official record book.

They lament, "How can we celebrate our centennial when the city of Las Vegas went and jumped the gun back in 2005?"

The chief culprit and focal point of their criticism has been Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, the noted party animal. You may recall Goodman went to great lengths to create a Las Vegas centennial celebration on May 15, 2005. The gathering was resplendent with such reserved offerings as free-flowing champagne, free-flowing showgirls and the world's largest sheet cake.

For my money, nothing says "Las Vegas history" like baked goods the size of the Mormon Fort.

Goodman was so successful at promoting the centennial idea the national media raced to write feature stories, and the Review-Journal produced an award-winning newspaper series and book, "The First 100: Portraits of the Men and Women Who Shaped Las Vegas," in part to commemorate the occasion.

Technically speaking, May 15, 1905, was the date of William Andrews Clark's great Las Vegas Townsite auction, a scorching day when speculators and hustlers and a few homesteaders from all points of the compass converged on the Mojave Desert watering hole to buy up slices of a dream.

Sticklers for such pesky gnats as facts are quick to buzz that Las Vegas wasn't officially incorporated until March 16, 1911. That date in 2011, they surmise, will mark its true centennial.

Goodman's insistence on calling his 2005 party our "centennial" infuriated some the Keepers of Important Dates and sent his political detractors into a tizzy from which they spent months recovering. Of all the audacity: Throwing a party in Las Vegas on a false pretense. Whoever heard of such a thing?

Not long after the sheet cake leftovers were trucked out to a local pig farm, Clark County officials revealed a plan to celebrate the certified, codified and entirely authentic county centennial on July 1, 2009.

With appropriate fanfare -- but, alas, no showgirls or sheet cake -- county officials have been building methodically toward July 1 as a genuinely historic occasion. It was 100 years ago on this date we shook off the dust of Lincoln County and became known as Clark County.

(Let's forget the fact a hefty slice of Clark County remained technically in Arizona for decades. And never mind that the "Las Vegas Valley" isn't really in a valley but a basin. Who wants to live in "Las Vegas Basin?" Sounds too close to "Las Vegas Gutter" to me.)

County Director of Public Communications Erik Pappa, known in the humorist's parlance as the "straight man," extols the many events and historic discussions in the works. He reminds me of the creation of the handsome traveling history exhibit, the refurbished and historically significant Candlelight Wedding Chapel, the addition of the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign to the National Register of Fabulous Historic Signs, and the historically accurate banners that adorn light poles on the Strip.

What, no showgirls? No sheet cake?

"Ours is very different from the city's," Pappa says. "I'm not saying one is right and one is wrong, but we're not setting any world records or anything like that. We wanted to do things that wouldn't cost a lot of money but that were significant. ... We wanted to create events that would have a lasting impact and create a legacy for the community."

In other words, no sheet cake.

Not that Pappa is criticizing the city's approach.

"I think that was legitimate," he says. "They were celebrating the creation of the community as opposed to the city. I think it was a very legitimate celebration."

Because Goodman will probably still be in office on March 16, 2011, I anticipate a third centennial celebration. Knowing him, he won't be able to resist.

But it's all good.

A second centennial celebration doesn't upset the balance of the universe, and a third would be an absolute hoot.

If today's Clark County centennial celebration gives longtime locals a sense of just how far we've come and gives newcomers a little respect for their Southern Nevada home, it's very good news.

Even if they don't give a sheet cake.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith/.