City abandons Fremont medallion ‘fun facts,’ mob museum’s sense of fun

Quietly, almost with stealth, the city of Las Vegas has replaced the offending medallions on Fremont Street. Remember the ones that were not historically accurate?

Well, the three most egregious have been fixed. Historical purists can sleep better at night.

The biggest blooper was that Bugsy Siegel bought the El Cortez in 1945 and planned the Flamingo as the first hotel on the Strip. Clearly it exaggerated Siegel’s role both downtown and on the Strip.

He was merely an investor in the El Cortez, despite what Wikipedia says.

And when the Flamingo opened in December 1946, it was the third hotel on the Strip, trailing the El Rancho Vegas in 1941 and the Last Frontier in 1942.

A medallion proclaimed the first atomic blast at the Nevada Test Site occurred “to great fanfare.” Not true. The blast was conducted in secrecy.

And a medallion saying the Golden Gate was the city’s first hotel when it opened in 1906 slights the real first hotel.

The new medallions say:

• 1906 Golden Gate, city’s oldest continuous hotel site, opens on Fremont & Main Street.

• 1945 Bugsy Siegel becomes part owner of El Cortez, later buys into Flamingo on Strip.

• 1951 First atomic test blast conducted in Nevada.

The new medallions were checked by historians for accuracy, unlike the first 18 medallions installed last year at a cost of $3,600 each.

The city’s office of Business Development, in charge of the medallion project, didn’t check its initial research.

The factual inaccuracies horrified the Las Vegas Historic Preservation Commission.

The initial fix suggested by Business Development Director Scott Adams was that they add two more plaques that would be “disclaimer plaques” explaining that the medallions were “fun facts.”

(Presumably, if they were fun, there was no need for them to be facts.)

Fortunately, that fix didn’t fly.

As of April 7, the fix is in, without any fanfare, at a cost of about $7,000.

Bob Stoldal, chairman of the Historic Preservation Commission, said something good has come out of this.

Sure, the city wasted time, effort and $7,000, and the plaques weren’t fixed for eight months; but now there’s a system to run things through the commission before authorizing any future historical medallions or markers.

“They finally got it. They understood the problem, and it ended on a positive note with a procedure being established,” Stoldal said.

“Any future historic plaques will come to the commission for vetting. We’re not opposed to fun facts; we just wanted the facts to be correct.”

That is what separated the retiring newsman with KLAS-TV from city bureaucrats. He thinks facts should be true.

THE NAME GAME: Faithful reader Bob Burglin of Bob’s Car Wash in North Las Vegas has suggested a new name for the mob museum, now saddled with the ponderous Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.

That name doesn’t even become a decent acronym in its favor. LVMOCLE?

Burglin called to suggest that if it’s good enough for Feodor Dostoevsky, it should be good enough for Las Vegas: The Museum of Crime and Punishment.

Sure, the initials MCP sound like the drug PCP, but drugs and crime and punishment should go hand in hand.

Like me, he thought Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement squeezes all the fun out of what is expected to be a fun museum.

“I don’t know why people try to be so politically correct,” Burglin said.

However, the museum’s name is a done deal, said Nancy Deaner, manager of the city of Las Vegas’s Office of Cultural Affairs.

“We’ve been going round and round about names for a long time. The designers, the architects, the city staff all have been playing with names,” Deaner said.

“We played with M.O.B. until the cows came home.”

Deaner recognizes that it will be known as the mob museum. Writers will just learn to refrain from capitalizing it.

Using Mob Museum would have downplayed the importance of the role of law enforcement in the museum, however, and some worried it would have glamorized the mob.

Well, la de da.

What’s the advantage of giving it a name nobody will remember … or use?

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275.