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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most Popular of All Time

Morning Coffee

In this episode, Morning Coffee . . . Now, I’m not saying everyone needs coffee. Some folks get by just fine on, I don’t know, sunlight and positive thinking. Me? I’m pretty sure I started drinking the stuff sometime around the Reagan administration. Reading John Gierach’s "Ode to Campfire Coffee" in Trout Bum (a book that should be required reading for anyone who sees sleeping on the ground as recreation) got me thinking about how we’ve managed to complicate something as fundamentally simple as boiling water and adding grounds. Taste, you say? Look, black coffee is an acquired taste, like tequila or cilantro. I just don’t get it. Gierach, bless his heart, mostly drinks his java streamside, probably while wearing wool socks and waders and contemplating the mysteries of the universe. As for me? My outdoor coffee experience is a bit different. Picture this: the High Sierra, where campfires are banned (to avoid agitating Smoky Bear), and I’m huddled over a Whisperlite , coax...
1 comment
Read more

A B+ Kind of Life

Welcome back to this week's On the Fly . Retirement has taught me something unexpected: life gets a lot more enjoyable when you stop chasing perfection. Lately, I've been having an absolute blast playing executive par-3 courses like Rancho Carlsbad . A short iron, a sunny morning, and nowhere to be except the next tee—that's my kind of day. This Thursday, though, I'm raising the stakes. I'm heading to The Links at Lakehouse in San Marcos, a full-size par-71 course with enough water hazards to keep the local fish well-stocked with my golf balls. After shooting a 64 on a par-3 course, I've set myself a new goal: shoot an 89 before my birthday next August. Why 89? Because on a par-71 course, that's bogey golf—one extra stroke per hole. For non-golfers, think of it this way: par is like earning 100% on a final exam. Bogey golf is a solid B+. You got the job done, learned something, and probably had a lot more fun getting there. The older I get, the more I appre...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Endless Work of Wisdom

It always makes me smile. The moment people learn I've officially entered what I like to call the Great Un-Working (retirement), they almost immediately ask the same question: “So . . . What do you do now?" I think they're expecting me to say I'm restoring a vintage sports car, hiking the John Muir Trail, or finally becoming fluent in French.   Instead, I tell them: "I live life deliberately." That's usually the point when I get a polite nod, followed by the unmistakable look of someone wondering whether I've simply found a more sophisticated way to say, “I’m becoming a bum.” Apparently, "living deliberately" sounds suspiciously like unemployment, just better branding. The truth is, what living deliberately looks like for me right now is taking time to synthesize a lifetime of experiences into these weekly reflections. It's slowing down long enough to ask what those experiences have taught me, while keeping the door wide open to the poss...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Tucson Typewriter Tale

One of the great joys of wandering without much of a plan is that the universe occasionally rewards your lack of organization. During my recent visit to Tucson, AZ, Robert and I were strolling through the Annex this afternoon, doing what tourists and newly minted retirees like me have elevated to an Olympic sport: meandering. The Annex is one of those places where every few steps there's another handmade candle, artisan coffee, or vintage object someone rescued from a garage sale and convinced the rest of us was always destined to become art. Then I saw something that genuinely stopped me. A young woman standing quietly behind a manual typewriter. Not a laptop designed to look like a typewriter. Not a quirky Bluetooth keyboard. An honest-to-goodness mechanical typewriter—the sort of machine that once announced every sentence to the entire office with a satisfying clack and enough force to wake nearby pigeons. With an iPhone 16 sitting in my pocket in an age when people write novels...
Post a Comment
Read more