Ride off into the sunset on Old West-inspired streets

Helldorado, a Las Vegas tradition that dates to 1934, is scheduled to take over downtown Las Vegas May 12-15.

The celebration revels in Old West traditions from rodeos to whisker-growing contests. For many years, the valley embraced the cowboy image and a fair number of streets are named from those roots. Here are some of the more interesting ones on the east side of the valley:

Roy Rogers and his wife, Dale Evans, were among the many Hollywood cowboy stars who attended Helldorado, and in 1946 they released a movie set at the event and titled “Heldorado.” They lost one “L” to the time’s more genteel sensibilities. While there are streets named after the couple in the northwest part of the valley, a more prominent road is connected to them on the east side, Warm Springs Road.

After attending his first Helldorado, Rogers decided he’d like to spend more time here and bought the Warm Springs Ranch, not far from the present location of Sunset Park. The ranch and its titular spring were southwest of the intersection of Paradise and Warm Springs roads. A large tract of suburban houses occupies the ranch land today.

Wigwam Avenue and Windmill, which run parallel to Warm Springs, were not named for the historical presence of either structure but rather for cartographical alliteration.

“They were part of a group of ‘w’ streets,” said Mark Hall-Patton, director of Clark County Museums. “They were good, Western-sounding names.”

Near the Sunrise Library there are several streets with frontier-themed names, including Ute, Hopi and Apache lanes, referencing the Native American tribes, Hick ock Street, misspelled but honoring Deadwood lawman Wild Bill Hickok and Crazy Horse Way, honoring the Lakota chief, not the gentlemen’s club.

A nearby neighborhood includes Bowie Street, after Jim Bowie, who died at the Alamo; the gun streets —  Winchester Court, Remington Drive and Ricochet Avenue; Long Horn Way, named for longhorn cattle; Clementine, named for a popular song of the Old West, “My Darling Clementine;” and Redeye Lane, taken from the nickname for the bourbon popular in Western saloons.

That same neighborhood includes Bonanza Road, which runs parallel to Cartwright Avenue, named for the Cartwright family from the popular TV Western “Bonanza.” Henderson boasts two streets named for stars of that show, Lorne Greene (although the street is spelled Lorne Green) and Dan Blocker avenues.

Rounding out that neighborhood are Sundance and Raindrop avenues, which in this context must have been named for the surprise hit song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” from the 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

Other neighborhoods feature Western names sprinkled liberally among non-Western names. In Stallion Ridge, a community near Horseman’s Park, Paint and Mustang Courts are near the intersection of Saddle Horse Avenue and Rustic Sunset Way, but so are Vulcan Street and Falconer and Quintillion avenues.

While some names originate from actual ranches, such as many named for local rancher Stowell Whitney, others such as Rawhide Street, Pecos Road and Annie Oakley Drive stem from a mania for western names that coincided with the golden age of the TV Western.

“Pecos Road was originally named Willie Road but was changed in 1952 when residents protested that it was ‘not fitting and proper’ for a road in Clark County,” Hall-Patton said. “I haven’t found out why they chose the new name, but it has a suitably Western sound.”

Contact Sunrise and Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.