Clockwise: Vegas Vic, Bucky Buckaroo, Last Chance Joe, Wendover Will

1940s-Today

They’re one of a kind. Dazzling. Captivating. Iconic. Pure Nevada.

They’re the mascots of the state’s gambling industry. They graced the facades of casinos in the gambling meccas, and some still do. Rather than merely signs, they’re like citizens, but atypical ones — larger, brighter and cartoony.

Here’s a look at four of them:

1) Vegas Vic (Las Vegas)

The 40-foot-tall cowboy resulted from an advertising campaign the Walter J. Thompson firm launched in 1946 that boasted “fun in the sun” and a smiling cowboy whose thumb directed toward Las Vegas. The ads appeared in Esquire, the Saturday Evening Post and other national magazines. A year later, a different agency personified in print the Western figure with the name, Vegas Vic, and a voice saying, “Howdy, pardner.”

In 1951, artist Pat Denner designed the Vegas Vic who’s become the icon, and the Young Electric Sign Company manufactured a neon version of him for the Pioneer Club. The cost was $90,000 (about $835,000 today). For the more than half-century since, Vic has remained at 25 E. Fremont Street, greeting passersby with “Howdy pardner, welcome to downtown Las Vegas.” He even gave an interview to the Las Vegas Sun in 2000.

2) Wendover Will (Wendover)

After Vegas Vic, in 1952, the team of Denner and the Young Company, created Wendover Will, another cowboy but much taller at 63 feet, for the State Line Casino in Wendover. Named after the border locale and the casino’s founder, William Smith, the neon mascot’s job was to lure travelers off of U.S. Highways 40 and 50 (today, Interstate 80) and into the gambling club/hotel/café/bar.

In 2001, when the casino’s ownership changed to the Wendover Nugget, 9-ton Wendover Will was donated to the city. He was restored and relocated to Wendover Boulevard in the heart of town, now West Wendover, where he stands today.

3) Bucky Buckaroo (Reno)

In the 1940s, caricaturist and commercial artist, Lewis “Lew” Hymers, designed Bucky, aka Nevada Bob, yet another cowboy but this one in the shape of Nevada.

Three or four versions were built, which hung on the marquee in the front and back of the Nevada Club at 224 N. Virginia Street. One of the Buckys, owned now by Will Durham, founder of the Nevada Neon Project, is 9 feet high and 7 feet long.

Unlike many of the neon signs manufactured in Nevada at the time, Bucky Buckaroo was made out of porcelain enamel rather than being painted, which helps it “look pristine,” Durham said. It’s impressive for 70 year old.

4) Last Chance Joe (Sparks)

Last Chance Joe is 35 feet high, 8 feet thick and 5,000-plus pounds! Roscoe “Duke” Reading designed the statue, and R.H. Grosh Scenic Studios in Los Angeles built it.

To construct him, workers first used structural angle iron to create his frame then covered it with chicken wire. Next, they applied many, many, many layers of papier mâché followed by two coats of celastic. Lastly, they painted and sprayed Last Chance Joe with plastic.

Once completed, they shipped him in three parts on a Southern Pacific flatcar to Sparks, where he was installed outside of Dick Graves’ Nugget for the 1958 grand opening.

Today, Last Chance Joe can be seen outside of the Sparks Heritage Museum at 814 Victorian Avenue.

Ever-Lasting Symbols

Whether in an original or new location, these vibrant, fun characters, along with many of their peers, endure as symbols — of a U.S. industry once unique to Nevada, gambling, and in turn, of the state’s historic identity. As well, today these icons boast the well-deserved label, Americana.

Sources

Photo of Bucky Buckaroo by Brian Ball, I Shoot Reno

1962-1999

You’ve likely heard of Dumbo, Horton and Babar, but what about Bertha?

Real, unlike the others, Bertha is an elephant renowned for having performed in shows at the Nugget hotel-casino, in Sparks, Nevada, for 38 years!

Former Nugget owner, John Ascuaga, bought Bertha in 1962 for $8,000 (that’s $63,000 in today’s dollars) from a Wisconsin circus museum and, soon after, had the 17 year old appear on stage for opening night of the showroom Circus Room and regularly thereafter.

“Bertha is really super. She’s so gentle and very intelligent. We do a trick where she lays on top of me. She is so careful that I’m not afraid at all,” said Diane Gustin, who performed with her (Nevada State Journal, July 20, 1975). “She is one in a million. She has a fine temperament.”

This Asian star often performed with a stunning female and, over the years, with a younger elephant sidekick, first Tina, then Angel. Once, she carried to the stage Liberace who was bedecked in a $100,000 costume. She also did her act at local elementary schools.

In 1973, Ascuaga awarded Bertha with a 10-year pin and inclusion into the prestigious Nugget employee Hall of Fame; she celebrated by consuming an extra hay bale.

Bertha lived in a barn adjacent to the Nugget, a $75,000 facility equipped with water, electricity, heat and an outdoor exercise yard. Her trainers lived in an apartment above it.

Beauty Routine

This 9,800-pound pachyderm chowed down five times a day, mostly on hay, grain, oat mash, bread, lettuce and other vegetables.

Her beauty and hygiene regimen read like a spa menu. During the summers, peak performance season, Bertha’s trainer bathed her and exfoliated her skin (with fine sandpaper) daily to keep her soft and smelling good. He cut her hair every six to eight weeks with … a blowtorch.

He routinely trimmed her toenails and cuticles. In the winter, when she didn’t perform because the showroom was closed, she basked in a total body, pore-clearing oil treatment that remained on her skin for four weeks.

The entertainment icon retired in October 1999 and died a month later at age 48.

Sources

Against a backdrop of sagebrush and dust in Nevada’s early, remote mining towns, saloons drew men for drinking and gambling. That combination, along with contrarian/antagonistic personalities, sometimes led to disputes that turned violent.

Here are three stories in which tempers, as fiery as the summers, got the better of men and ended in grim, sometimes fatal, outcomes.

1) Belcher v. Field
Place: Sparks (Washoe County)
Date: Thursday, October 13, 1904
Time: 9:30 p.m.

After having dinner with a woman, W.S. Field played roulette at the Oberon saloon. He nearly had lost all his money when the game ball traveled the wheel and stopped without having fallen into a pocket. Field requested a do-over.

“Give me a show for my money,” he said. “There is enough percentage in this game without robbing a man” (Reno Evening Gazette, Oct. 14, 1904).

The dealer refused, and an argument ensued.

The drunken faro banker, Joe Belcher, who had “the reputation of being a bad man,” ran over to the roulette table and cold-cocked Field several times on the neck and jaw with a 0.38-caliber derringer, the final blow firing and breaking the weapon (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 2, 1904). The bullet lodged in Field’s right temple, half an inch from his eye. Fortunately, he survived.

Belcher was charged with intent to kill. In the preliminary hearing, he admitted to assaulting Field but his pistol going off was accidental, he hadn’t meant to kill him.

The judge, however, bound the perpetrator over for trial. In the interim, he was held in the county jail as he couldn’t make bail. 

In late October, the case took an unexpected turn. Field drove to Verdi, Nevada with the woman with whom he’d dined at the Oberon and got into a heated dispute with her there, during which he stabbed her several times. He disposed of the knife and hopped the first train westward.

The following month, with Field, the complaining witness, out of the state, Belcher was released on $600 bail.

A few weeks later, Field returned to Sparks, thus the trial was scheduled for February 1905.

With the court proceedings finally underway, Belcher was called but didn’t appear. He’d forfeited bond and had gone on the lam. Law enforcement’s immediate attempts to find him failed.

2) Armstrong v. Coski
Place: Goodsprings (Clark County)
Date: Sunday, June 27, 1915
Time: 1:30 a.m.

During a game of stud poker among six men— Paul Coski, Tony Dietrich, Roy Blood, F.J. Schroeder, Tom Lowe and J.C. Armstrong — at the Pioneer saloon, mayhem ensued.

Coski, a miner, was dealing. All but Lowe folded, but Armstrong stayed and announced he’d just seen Coski deal himself a card from the deck bottom. Armstrong, “quiet, self-possessed and gentlemanly on all occasions,” proposed the pot be divided between Lowe and Coski and the matter dropped (Las Vegas Age, June 27, 1915). Coski, though, who was known to be argumentative, refused, threatened them and yanked the pot his way.

Armstrong said he wouldn’t tolerate cheating and pushed him back. Coski, a former prize fighter, began to climb over the table to get at 60-plus-year-old Armstrong. The latter drew a six-shooter and clocked Coski on the head with it. Coski grabbed Armstrong’s wrist and once more tried to get at him. Armstrong fired. The shot passed through Coski’s hand and into his chest. When that didn’t stop him, Armstrong fired again, causing Coski to slide back off the table and onto the floor, dead.

Armstrong’s trial took place in Las Vegas in mid-October. It lasted a week, with 19 witnesses for the defense and three for the prosecution testifying. His attorney argued Armstrong had acted in self-defense.

The jury agreed and found him not guilty.

Elite Club on Main Street, Ely, c. 1940 (first on left)

3) Doyle v. Clifford
Place: Ely (White Pine County)
Date: Friday, August 28, 1936
Time: Unknown

William Doyle, a businessman well known in Elko, Mountain City, Tonopah, Ely and other Silver State towns, stopped into the Elite Club to see his former gambling partner, Mickey Clifford, the roulette dealer there.

The men began to bicker, supposedly over a previous gaming deal. Doyle threatened to retrieve his gun from outside, return and kill Clifford. Doyle left.

Then he returned. Clifford wasn’t in the building, though, so Doyle began chatting with the proprietor, W.L. Tuck, at the bar.

When Clifford appeared and resumed his spot behind the roulette wheel. Doyle drew his 0.44-caliber weapon, aimed and fired, but as he did so, Tuck grabbed his arm, causing the bullet to veer off target and hit only the roulette table. During the brief struggle between them, Doyle got off a second shot, which again hit the furniture.

Henry Marriott, Ely’s chief of police, quickly arrived and disarmed and arrested Doyle. Witnesses said Doyle had shot Clifford to assuage a grudge he’d carried against him.

The shooter was charged with assault with intent to kill and later released on $2,500 bond.

At the preliminary hearing, Doyle’s attorney, J.M. Collins, filed a motion for dismissal of the charges because his client was intoxicated at the time of the incident.

In September, the justice of the peace bound Doyle over for trial. However, before that could take place, another attorney for Doyle, Joe McNamara, successfully got the original charge vacated. He’d argued that the preliminary hearing had been conducted illegally in that:

• the court had failed to grant or deny dismissal of the charges upon request
• the defendant hadn’t been given the opportunity to make a statement

In October, Doyle was charged with the lesser infraction of maliciously firing a gun in a public place. He pleaded guilty, and the judge fined him $25 plus $25 for costs (a total of about $875 today).

Sources