Start the Celebration

1909. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -- the NAACP -- was formed in New York. Robert E. Peary and five fellow adventurers reached the North Pole.

Closer to home: Clark County was born.

Today, Clark County officially kicks off a yearlong celebration of its 100th birthday with the opening of a centennial exhibit at the Clark County Museum, 1830 S. Boulder Highway, Henderson.

On Friday, the first in a series of monthly roundtable discussions about key themes in Clark County history will take place at the Clark County Government Center, 500 S. Grand Central Parkway.

Then, throughout the rest of 2009, a series of workshops, exhibits and other celebratory events will help Clark Countians learn more about the place they call home.

Dorothy Wright, the county's centennial program administrator, said the effort will take the form of "destinations history," examining Clark County's history as a destination for not just tourists, but for generations of miners, ranchers, American Indians and others.

"We'll try to help people understand that there's quite a myriad of people here, of history, of culture," says Mark Hall-Patton, administrator of the Clark County Museum. "When you realize we're over 8,000 square miles -- larger than the state of Israel, larger than New Jersey -- as a county, there's a lot going on here."

If nothing else, the centennial celebration represents a chance to both correct a few misimpressions Southern Nevadans may hold and also to teach county residents something new about their home.

For example, most of us probably know that the Strip lies not in the city of Las Vegas but in unincorporated Clark County. A few of us probably know that Clark County was carved out of Lincoln County. But how many know, or can recall, the county's namesake: Railroad magnate William Andrews Clark?

"Not only was he a rail magnate, but he was a U.S. senator from Montana," Wright adds. "It's kind of like, what was he doing down here?"

The short answer: Clark purchased land for his railroad and on which to provide housing for his workers. One of this year's scheduled centennial events will be the opening of a publicly accessible railroad cottage on the Clark County Museum grounds.

Also on the centennial schedule: A traveling exhibit focusing on rural Clark County; the airing of historical programming on CCTV, Channel 4, Clark County's cable station, and online; the Nov. 14 reopening of the restored historic Candlelight Wedding Chapel on the county museum's Heritage Street; and a geocaching event in which people use hand-held GPS devices to find 10 sites across the valley.

Also as part of the celebration, county officials hope to receive word that the historic Las Vegas welcome sign on the southern end of the Strip has been approved for inclusion on the National Register for Historic Places.

On the first Friday of each month, a free roundtable discussion at the county government center will explore such issues as racial segregation (on Friday), women in Las Vegas, the county's mining history, architecture and neon in the county, the mob, entertainers, Hispanics and the military.

The goal of the centennial celebration is to inform residents about the county's, and their own, history in a fun, interesting way.

"I think initially people may think they're not interested," Wright says. "But certainly our history, for one thing, is so recent that people can relate to it. People their grandparents' age actually did some of these really cool things or were raised in a mining boomtown. So I think it's easier to relate to it that way."

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.