Neon / Atomic Testing

Neon lighting, introduced in Paris in 1910, became a brilliant and efficient alternative to the incandescent light bulb and grew popular across the United States in advertising, from motels, restaurants, and theatres to the Goodyear Blimp, with Broadway's Great White Way as its ultimate display. After World War II, as skilled neon craftsmen retired and were not replaced and cheaper mass-produced plastic signs became common, neon declined nationally but found new life in Las Vegas. The city's first neon sign was built in 1929, probably for the Oasis Café at 123 Fremont Street, and in the 1940s and 1950s, as the Las Vegas Strip and downtown's Glitter Gulch emerged, hotels competed for ever larger and brighter casino signs. Las Vegas sought an image of lights, glamour, and excitement, and neon helped create it, with signs that dwarfed the buildings they advertised and at night became the architecture itself. After World War II, during the early Cold War with the Soviet Union, the United States shifted above-ground atomic testing from the South Pacific to Nevada mainly for national security reasons, since the area had a small population and was already federally owned. The first test at the Nevada Test Site took place on January 27, 1951, and the site boosted the Las Vegas economy with thousands of jobs and international publicity as locals and tourists traveled to Mount Charleston to watch the blasts. The mushroom cloud became a symbol of the era, and atomic hairdos, atomic cocktails, and the Miss Atomic Bomb contest entered Las Vegas culture. In 1963, after a treaty was signed by the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, testing moved underground. Controversy later arose over the Downwinders exposed to radiation in fallout patterns, and health problems among those exposed, including soldiers who took part in the tests, became a tragic by-product of the era. The last underground test was on September 23, 1993, and part of the site at Yucca Mountain is being developed for nuclear waste storage.

Las Vegas, Nevada · United States