Skip to main content

Diamonds in the Desert

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of or remember the futuristic design of the 1950s dubbed the Googie architecture movement? Stay with me; you may be surprised.

Entering Las Vegas, Nevada, from California on Arrowhead Highway/Highway 91, now called “the Strip,” you can still find remnants of roadside America from its motoring past. One of the not-so-ubiquitous treasures is the Diamond Inn Motel, built in 1940.

While visiting Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay, I was delighted to discover two historic landmarks, “The Sign” and the Diamond Inn Motel. Well, to be honest, only the sign is designated as a historic landmark. But they are both worth a look just to get a glimpse of Las Vegas’s history.

You can discover this quaint roadside business if you have the pluck to make your way from your room through the modern monolith hotel/casino maze and can actually get outside for an early morning walk. 

Admittedly, I’m an early bird; I was out the door by 5:15 a.m. enjoying a light breeze and a pleasant 78 degrees. Keep in mind that in late May, temperatures can quickly exceed 100. My morning walk quickly reminded me of the dramatic contrast of scale between the old and the new. Now, practically in the shadow of the immense Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, I could not pass up the opportunity to walk into the Diamond Inn’s main check-in/reception area and ask the young man behind the counter, “How much is a room?” He pointed to a handwritten piece of paper on the counter with the prices for the night and weekly rates. “Do you have any brochures?” I asked. “Not about the hotel,” he said. “Just the ones there on the window sill.” Yes, you guessed it, the location of strip clubs and the typical tourist brochures you find littering the sidewalks of Las Vegas.

When built in 1940, the Desert Isle Motel, its original name, hovered on the city's outskirts. With a little research, you will discover it is one of the oldest buildings still standing on the strip. The first hotel/casino built on the strip was called the El Rancho Vegas Hotel & Casino, built in 1941. Later, in the '40s and ’50s, dozens of motels were built next door, the Mirage, Lone Palm, Desert Rose, and many others that were the high points of Old Vegas with their glittering neon signs. The Diamond Inn is still standing and in business; it is a little worn from the years of blistering heat. The front window was broken and held in place with duct tape, the pool had been drained, and it could use a paint job; I could only imagine what the rooms were like. However, there were cars parked in designated room spaces. That’s a good sign, right?  My hunch is today, tourists would call it a diamond in the rough, a historical treasure.

Proceeding south as the rays of golden sunrise peeked over the horizon, the second gem I approached was the famous Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, built in 1959 and now powered by a solar array. Coincidently, I had never seen this sign before. As it’s known to the locals, the sign is located in the median at 5100 Las Vegas Boulevard South, just north of the historic stone pillars of the old McCarran Airport on the east side and across from the Bali Hai Golf Club. According to my GPS, the sign sits in the town of Paradise and is located roughly four miles south of the actual city limits of Las Vegas.

As I approached from the north side, in the large bold and scripted font, it read, Drive Carefully Come Back Soon. Huh, what is this? I thought. So, I crossed the street to the median and walked around to read the placard next to the large solar panels.

A few fun facts were:

  • Designed in 1959 by Architect Betsy Willis
  • It is a horizontally stretched diamond-shape
  • The design was never copyrighted and remains in the public domain
  • The white neon circles were designed to represent silver dollars
  • December 2008, a 10-acre parking lot was built for tourists
  • Added to State Register of Historic Places in December 2013
Surprisingly, it looked familiar. So, a quick tap on the Googie link from a Google search on my phone. I had seen this style before. For those familiar with Los Angeles, some examples are Norms Restaurants, Johnie’s Coffee Shop on Wilshire Boulevard, the oldest McDonalds in Downey, California, which opened in 1953, the classic drive-in theater signs, and the Theme Building at the Los Angeles airport.

Today, you can see many diamonds in the desert in Las Vegas, but not one that represents such a blast from roadside America’s motoring past.

I'm Patrick Ball; thanks for reading. See you in the next episode.

Comments

Most Popular of All Time

We Need Awe More Than Ever

In this episode, Why We Need Awe More Than Ever Yesterday morning, I slipped into the cool stillness of my backyard before dawn. The air was crisp, the silence deep—broken only by the faint rustling of leaves and the familiar calls of birds waking early. Then I looked up. A thin crescent moon hung low in the east, with Venus just above it like a shining jewel. The sky was clear and full of stars, and for a moment, I felt something I hadn’t in a long time: Awe! For thousands of years, the heavens have carried on their steady dance, untouched by human noise. No ruler, no election, no breaking news has ever changed their rhythm. And yet here I was, tempted to reach for my phone—to trade the eternal for the urgent. Instead, I stayed. I watched the moonrise, the sky slowly lighten, and the world around me stir. Ducks passed overhead in a loose V, hummingbirds zipped past to visit their feeder, pausing mid-air as if curious about me sitting so still. Little by little, the static in my mind f...

The Birth of a Cubs Legend

In this episode, The 162-Game Exhale — and the Birth of a Cubs Legend There’s a hush in the baseball world on Game 162 — a collective breath drawn in and slowly released. Scoreboards stop flipping. Dugouts empty. For six months, the game has been our steady heartbeat, pulsing from the cherry blossoms of Tokyo in March to the crisp, playoff-charged winds of late September. And now, as the regular season exhales, baseball fans everywhere pause to absorb the story we’ve just lived. For me, that story has been deeply personal. This season unfolded in the rhythms of my daily life. It was the summer soundtrack echoing beneath the constant turmoil of politics and sensational headlines. It was a handful of carefully chosen ballpark pilgrimages stitched together with countless nights in front of MLB.TV. And at the center of it all, for a lifelong Cubs fan like me, it revolved around one name — a young center fielder who turned hope into history: Pete Crow-Armstrong. The 2025 season didn’t begin...

The Silent Grid–Part Two

In this episode, The Silent Grid – Part Two Sirens split the night as Greenwood went dark. Marvin knew instantly—the blackout wasn’t an accident. It was a warning. In this quiet town, where life once unfolded at a predictable pace, a sleek, intuitive smartphone—a so-called gift from the future —has arrived. But it’s no tool for connection. It’s a silent force, erasing individuality and turning neighbors into something less than human. Marvin Gellborn, a man who values independence, sees the truth. His device isn’t helping; it’s testing him, watching him, and quietly embedding itself into the life of Greenwood. Welcome back to On the Fly . In this week’s episode of The Silent Grid , GridBot tightens its grip. After a hopeful community gathering, Marvin and his robot companion, Norman, notice a troubling absence—the very generation they hoped to reach has vanished into the neon glow of The Signal Box , a youth tech hub pulsing with digital obsession. When Greenwood’s lights vanish, Marvi...

The Pessimism Aversion Trap

In this episode, The Pessimism Aversion Trap Picture this: a room full of bright minds nodding in agreement as a bold new strategy is unveiled. The slides are polished, the vision is grand, and the future, we're told, has never looked brighter. Everyone beams—because who wants to be the one to say, "Um… this might not work"? Heaven forbid someone spoil the mood with a dose of reality. Better to smile, add a buzzword or two, and march confidently toward disaster. That's how the Pessimism Aversion Trap works. Even now, I can still hear the sound—a high-pitched shriek and a digital hum, followed by the slow, rhythmic clatter of data pouring from a 5¼-inch floppy disk. It was the late 1980s, and my makeshift home office (our living room) was dominated by what felt like a marvel of modern engineering: a used Tandy 1000 PC with not one, but two floppy drives. To top it off, we purchased a 'blisteringly fast' 300-baud modem—which, for the uninitiated, could downloa...