More than Hoover Dam: Boulder City’s historic district

On a sunny and hot Wednesday afternoon in Boulder City, Jackie, a visitor from the United Kingdom, walked up to the counter as Hodson, 63, started to crack jokes. He turned down the radio, which was emitting some older jazz-blues tunes, to take a payment.

Jackie’s travel partner, also from the U.K., bought some Vegas-related memorabilia — a few poker chips and a red die. Hodson jokes she can’t use these chips to gamble. The woman promises she won’t try.

The women continued on their way to Hoover Dam, but Hodson sat back down. He lives in Boulder City. He works at Sherman Wright’s antique store.

“He gave me the opportunity to work with him. He said, ‘You don’t work for me, Hunter. You work with me.’ And that was a keeper for me,” Hodson said. “Sherman is not only a swell guy, he knows everything about old stuff, including me.”

Boulder City is home to Hoover Dam, but who calls Boulder City home? At one point in time, the town was made up almost entirely of dam workers. Now, it’s commercial owners and workers who claim residence there.

Its rich history is splattered across its historic district, recreational areas and its national landmark. More so, Boulder City’s story is embedded in the pink and white stripes of Grandma Daisy’s ice cream parlor. It’s painted on the Coffee Cup Cafe’s turquoise walls, and chronicled in the photo trunk at Wright’s antique store.

It’s inside the memories of Boulder City’s longtime residents.

Junk-turned-antiques

“Everybody know everybody. It’s really a small town,” said Sherman Wright of Sherman’s House of Antiques. “When you walk down the street people are like, ‘Hi Sherm, how you doing?’ and I can speak to them, ‘Hey Jeff, how you doing?’ because we know each other.”

Wright, 67, owns the antique store alongside his wife, Brenda, whom he brought to Boulder City after they started dating in 2009. In 2010, they got married, and around the same time, opened the antique house.

The two make a good team. Wright tackles the item collection, Brenda organizes it into an appetizing display, he said.

“I find junk. She turns it into antiques,” Wright said. “She’s the wind beneath my sail.”

Boulder City was an epicenter for work at one point. Hoover Dam, built by Six Companies Inc. in the 1930s, drew thousands of men and their families to Southern Nevada desperate for a penny.

By 1936, the dam was complete, but many of the workers decided to stay. Over two decades later, Congress approved the Boulder City Act and allowed residents to create a local government and produce a municipality.

The town has changed and grown exponentially since the dam completion, but parts of it never change, Wright said. He’s originally from Baltimore, but he’s lived in Boulder City for 25 years, and it’s nothing like the East Coast, he said.

To him, Boulder City is nice. It’s peaceful and quiet. It’s home.

“It’s still a nice knit community … but we get a lot more visitors from out of state,” he said. “They’re going to bury me out here in Boulder City.”

A Boulder City treat

Jessie Morelli, 31, who co-owns Grandma Daisy’s Candy Store and Ice Cream Parlor with her mom, attributes the town’s tourism to Hoover Dam. Visitors love the “old timey and historic” feeling, she said.

“It’s grown into such a destination,” Morelli said. “There’s tons of tourists coming to see the Hoover Dam, and then they see this cute, quaint little town, and they just have to come check it out.”

Her grandma, who is not the namesake of the parlor, bought the store in 2006, and the two worked together for a year before her grandmother died. Morelli loves the small town feel, she said.

“It’s such a good small community,” she said. “Everyone’s there for everybody.”

While her family took over the store nearly two decades ago, Grandma Daisy’s has actually been around since 2001, she said. Multiple times a day, customers tell her they used to drink root beer floats with their grandpa at the store.

Many share stories of their childhood in the bright parlor. Outside is a blast from the past: A Zoltar Machine, at the ready to provide a fortune, and two mechanical horse rides for children contribute to the historical feel of the place. Inside, a cow head is mounted to the wall.

All of which came from a local vendor called Characters Unlimited, a company that designs and builds animatronic people, birds, animals and fortune teller machines.

A special town

A few doors down from the pink and white parlor is the Coffee Cup Cafe, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. Its anniversary party, despite being a well-known diner, was a low-key celebration.

“I think we might have had a drink,” co-owner Terry Stevens said.

The diner has been around longer than 1994. Before then, it was in a different spot and under different leadership, but now, Stevens, 40, owns the famous spot alongside his sister. The walls of the cafe are lined with memories of years of service.

Stevens, who grew up in Boulder City, recalls eating at the original cafe as a kid. The city, while there’s been outside push to change, has stayed the same, he said.