‘The early Twitter’: Vintage postcards tell Las Vegas’ story (2024)

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Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam is seen in a postcard from the early to mid-20th Century. (UNLV Libraries Special Collections and Archives)

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ByBrett Clarkson/Las Vegas Review-Journal

June 16, 2023 - 6:00 am

Before social media, they were social media.

Postcards from the early to mid-20th century were the Instagram posts and tweets of their time. They told visual stories. You could only write a certain amount of words on the back of one. And it wasn’t just tourists that sent them. Everybody did.

“They were in fact, the early Twitter,” said Robert Stoldal, 80, a Las Vegas historian and former journalist whose collection numbers about 15,000 postcards.

Old postcards from the Las Vegas of yesteryear are not just artistry in their own right, but they are historical artifacts. They show the evolution of this town from a railroad and farming outpost to what it is today.

“We moved into a hospitality industry and that is reflected in the postcards,” Stoldal said.

That evolution was spurred by a few factors.

In the 1930s, the building of the Hoover Dam — also referred to as the Boulder Dam in certain postcards, depending on the year — brought construction workers to the area but also a slew of photographers wanting to document the incredible engineering feat. In 1931, gambling was legalized in Nevada.

The postcards here, which are part of UNLV’s University Libraries Special Collections and Archives, help tell the story of Las Vegas. They show Fremont Street through the years, some of the bygone, or previous incarnations of, iconic Strip hotels and casinos. And the dam itself is well-documented.

Scroll down to see some of the postcards from UNLV’s collection, more of which can be viewed here.

This postcard from the 1930s shows the Pioneer Club, which was at the corner of Fremont Street and 1st Street:

Fremont Street in is also shown in this 1930s/1940s-era postcard:

And here’s Fremont in a black-and-white photograph postcard from the late 1940s:

Boulder City is seen in a postcard from the 1940s:

The Hoover Dam, referred to as the Boulder Dam, from a postcard circa mid-1930s the 1950s, although likely pre-1947 because that’s when Congress officially restored the Hoover name to the dam, which had been called the Boulder Dam by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration, but that’s another story:

As well, a visitors corridor at the dam is depicted in a postcard circa 1930 to 1935:

And here’s the dam in 1935:

Back in Las Vegas on the Strip, the famed Flamingo Hotel is seen in this postcard from 1954:

A postcard from sometime between 1955 and 1965 shows the inside of the Riviera Hotel:

Valley of Fire State Park outside Las Vegas is shown in a postcard that dates from sometime between 1930 and 1959:

Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com

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