Yellowed pages show nothing changes under Daily Desert Sun

Their pages crinkled like old skin but more delicate, the yellowed 1931 Daily Desert Sun newspapers were spread across Matt Dorman's kitchen table.

Like all newspapers, these were maps to the past. Las Vegas newspapers, like the town itself, have always been long on promotion and short on introspection. Around here, brass bands and boomtown rhetoric beat slow growth and sensible shoes every time.

The old newspapers, of course, were only a pulpy reflection of our confident selves.

There was plenty of news to go around. There were daily updates on Thomas A. Edison's worsening medical condition and stories about the latest legal maneuvering of "Scarface Al" Capone. Charles Lindbergh was setting flying records, but it was the female pilot Ruth Nichols who gained headlines by traveling 2,165 miles in 15 hours.

Meanwhile, Boulder City had begun paving its streets.

The Chile King and Manhattan Café were bustling eateries downtown, and Ronzone's and the Boulder Independent Drug Store were proud advertisers.

At Las Vegas Cash & Carry, a can of tomato sauce was 5 cents and bread was 7 cents a loaf.

Downtown's Las Vegas Club didn't advertise gambling. (Although tolerated locally, gambling was still a few months from being legalized to the shock of the nation.) It promoted its supply of "soft drinks, cigarettes, cigars, candy and tobacco."

A war in faraway Manchuria was gaining steam but didn't seem like much to worry about. It was a murder close to home that had the locals alarmed.

I scanned the pages last week before Dorman, a union carpenter and country music songwriter, donated what is thought to be the most complete collection of the Daily Desert Sun from its one-year existence to the Nevada History Museum.

The newspaper's first edition was printed Aug. 24, 1931, with the credo, "Dedicated to Progress." A year later, it ceased to exist even as Las Vegas discovered a way out of the headlock of the Great Depression with legalized casino gambling.

Nevada historians will lose themselves in the pages. But I wondered what those old newspapers might teach us about Las Vegas as it exists today in the throes of a recession with an ongoing mortgage crisis and an unemployment rate reaching 13 percent and higher.

The broadsheet was nothing if not self-confident, "Forging a New Link in the Strong Chain of Las Vegas' Progress." How's that for chest-thumping?

The unabashed hyperbole continued:

"The progress of Las Vegas and the vast far-flung Empire of the Colorado is keyed to a very rapid tempo, swift, sure, permanent. Into this new scheme of things there has advanced a new factor, an entity of service and usefulness: a member of the Fourth Estate; an added forum of public opinion.

"This new made instrument of progress, fashioned to service the needs of the ever-widening scope of Empire -- stands alert and ready to serve.

"We present the Daily Desert Sun to the people of Las Vegas and the great Colorado River empire."

Fast-forward eight decades. Last week, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce sponsored Preview 2010. With due respect to the experts assembled, these days you don't need a casino CEO, a best-selling author or a gifted numbers-cruncher to tell you times are tough. Statistics prove that out. So does the undeniable malaise on the streets of Las Vegas, where the optimism was once 100-proof.

Federal government projects, legalized gambling, quickie divorces and an amazing knack for self-promotion helped drag Nevada out of the depths of the Great Depression. These days we're told our juice in Washington has never been greater: Can it bring us back from the brink?

Until someone wise hustles up the next big thing, I am left wondering whether Las Vegas has lost its grand huckster's mojo for good.

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.