Author explores Las Vegas history

Geoff Schumacher says there are three groups of locals who will be interested in reading his new book, "Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas" -- old-timers, newcomers and visitors.

When it is pointed out that everybody in Las Vegas falls into one of these three categories, Schumacher smiles.

"The old-timers will find the book interesting because they lived through (the history)," he says. "Newcomers will be interested because they don't know anything about it -- they're new to town. And visitors will be interested because they are potential residents."

Schumacher's book, just released from Stephens Press, focuses on arguably the most interesting and exciting decade in local history -- the 1990s -- that saw an unprecedented population explosion, the rise of megaresorts on the Strip and massive master-planned communities, and the beginning of downtown redevelopment.

Schumacher will sign copies of "Sun, Sin & Suburbia" from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Borders Book Music & Cafe at West Charleston Boulevard and the northern Las Vegas Beltway, and from 4-6 p.m. at the Reading Room at Mandalay Place.

With chapters that detail the history of the Strip from the 1940s to the present, the growth of Summerlin, Henderson and North Las Vegas, transportation issues and federal involvement in area development, Schumacher gives a thorough account of one of the valley's most hectic decades.

Schumacher, the editor of the Las Vegas Mercury and editorial director for several other Stephens Media Group publications, including the View, says his modern history fills a gap in books about Las Vegas.

"The history of Las Vegas over the last 20 years hasn't been covered yet," he says. "This (book) is the first of its kind, really. It's about time."

And as a life-long Southern Nevadan and a long-time local journalist, Schumacher says he was the right man for the job. He worked as a reporter, city editor and columnist for the Las Vegas Sun for 10 years, and published freelance articles in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, In These Times and High Country News.

Schumacher's regular "Editor's Note" column in the Las Vegas Mercury recently was named "Best Local Column" in the Weeklies category of the 2004 Nevada Press Association's "Better Newspaper Contest."

"I was here during the entire time as a reporter, editor and columnist," he says. "I know the subject matter. I had a lot of material in my own archives."

In addition, while preparing to write "Sun, Sin & Suburbia," Schumacher read every book he could find already written about Las Vegas and conducted more than 100 interviews with important and influential valley residents, such as Mark Fine, instrumental developer of both Green Valley and Summerlin and Bill Boyd, CEO of Boyd Gaming Group, which owns both the downtown Fremont and California hotel-casinos.

But Schumacher says some of the more interesting interviews he conducted were with lesser-known locals, such as Lou LaPorta, one of the original Henderson city council members, who talked about the city's early days operating on a $350,000 budget; and Florence Murphy, who, with her husband, Red, owned the North Las Vegas Airport when reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes landed his private planes there in the 1940s.

"She was one of the first people to get to know Howard Hughes," Schumacher says. "He struck her as a fairly normal guy in those days. He didn't have a lot of the eccentricities you would come to know about later."

Former U.S. senator and Nevada governor Richard Bryan, who wrote the introduction to "Sun, Sin & Suburbia," called the book "a carefully researched chronicle of the the events that have made Las Vegas the quintessential city of the 21st century ... a fascinating story of the defining events that made a watering hole on the Old Spanish Trail into an international dateline in the 20th century."

Schumacher says his 272-page book should be a lively read.

"It's a history, but it's not boring," Schumacher says. "It's written in conversational language about stuff you would be interested in. It's like the daily newspaper."

Schumacher lives in northwest Las Vegas with his wife, Tammy, and daughters Erin and Sara to whom "Sun, Sin & Suburbia" is dedicated. He says he's already planning a second book, this time focusing on "the two Nevadas" -- Las Vegas versus the rest of the state.


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