The Paiutes: When John Fremont came through here in 1844, he described them as "lizard eaters," since that's what he saw them eating, and thus made it look as though they were a hopeless case. When the Mormons came here, some of the Paiutes swiped their food, and while that was a factor in the church's decision to leave the fort here, it was far from the only reason. In fact, Paiutes survived in what many saw as an uninhabitable area for hundreds of years before white guys had to bring in swamp coolers.
William Bringhurst: He headed the Mormon mission here and got it started. When missionaries found a lead outcropping on Mount Potosi, Brigham Young sent a miner here to get the lead out—literally. Bringhurst fought the effort, believing it would interfere with his flock's missionary duties. For this, he was disfellowshipped for a time and removed as mission president. And it turned out the lead wasn't very good.
Archibald Stewart: He owned the Las Vegas Ranch, which evolved out of the Mormon Fort mission. He was shot at Kiel Ranch, and thus his wife, Helen, became owner of a substantial portion of the Valley and "the first lady of Las Vegas"—a monumental figure in our local history. But what was Archibald's problem? Conrad Kiel thought he was a city slicker who hustled ownership of the ranch away from Octavius Decatur Gass, his old friend, and the Stewarts and Kiels didn't get along—at all. In truth, Gass wasn't the world's greatest businessman and had other investments go awry.
Ray Lyman Wilbur: Herbert Hoover's secretary of the interior, in charge of the dam project, was jeered for naming the thing for the unpopular president whom many blamed—wrongly—for causing the Great Depression. But sucking up to your boss isn't the worst thing you can do. More important, some Las Vegans were upset that Wilbur supported building a residential area for dam workers instead of housing them in Las Vegas. Naturally, Las Vegans wanted the money and industry that would result. But let's face it: The drive to and from the dam site in the 1930s would have been horrendous for workers to do daily.
Moe Dalitz: Yes, a onetime bootlegger with mob ties. Yes, he got his hands dirty. But he also did a lot for the community—for profit as a developer and for nothing as a philanthropist. And given all of the things that were bad about the mob, I'd give anything to know what he thought of Frank Rosenthal having his own TV show, for heaven's sake, and Tony Spilotro's hole-in-the-wall gang getting its name by blowing a hole in Bertha's jewelry store. Moe and his friends were smarter. They tried to fly under the radar, even if they didn't always succeed.
Harry Claiborne: He was a brilliant attorney who became a federal judge, and federal officials were determined to get him. As Hank Greenspun put it, they tried to hang a judge by using a pimp, Joe Conforte, the Mustang Ranch brothel owner. He eventually was impeached, convicted and removed due to tax-evasion charges. Yes, he screwed up. But the feds, led by FBI agent-in-charge Joe Yablonsky, clearly wanted to unhorse the local power structure, which struck them as a group of hoodlums and front men for hoodlums.
Every Mayor: Yup, all of them. The mayor tends to be the public face of Las Vegas, but he or she is only one of a city council and they, in turn, have to deal with a bureaucracy, the county, other leaders, etc. Ernie Cragin was mayor and instituted a lot of segregationist policies that are a blight on our history, but he wasn't alone. Oscar Goodman takes a whacking from some pundits for his excesses, some of which are utterly ridiculous. But they feed the notion that he's all-powerful while deriding the same notion, and when something goes wrong with Downtown redevelopment, he isn't the only one to blame.