In The News: Special Collections and Archives

KLAS-TV: 8 News Now

Using DNA samples, human remains found in the desert south of Las Vegas more than 50 years ago have been identified as a missing Canadian woman who may have been the victim of a mob hit. During the investigation, reports suggested Just was an acquaintance of Thomas Hanley, the former head of the American Federation of Casino and Gaming Employees and the Gaming and Office Employee Union. Hanley had known ties to organized crime in Las Vegas and the Midwest, according to the UNLV Special Collections and Archives. He was accused of killing Ralph Alsup, of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 525, in 1966, but the charges against Hanley were dropped.

Las Vegas Black Image Magazine

On Sept. 12, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh unveiled a powerful and historic tribute — a stunning exhibition honoring 60 Black photojournalists from across the nation. Among those featured in this visually compelling space was our very own Clinton Wright, veteran photojournalist of The Voice Newspaper, whose images of Las Vegas’s Black community have captured decades of untold stories.

Time

Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl pays homage to the rip-roaring lifestyle of showgirls. TIME called up showgirls who have performed in Las Vegas, the longtime capital of showgirl shows in the U.S., to see how they think the album captured the life of a showgirl and what the life of a showgirl is really like.

KVVU-TV: Fox 5

Have questions or want to learn more about the history of Las Vegas? There is no better place to start than the Special Collections and Archives Department at UNLV.

KTNV-TV: ABC 13

When you think of "Old Vegas," the icons that probably come to mind are names like Elvis, Sinatra and Wayne Newton. However, there were many Asian American and Pacific Islander performers then, too, who played an integral role in shaping entertainment on the Las Vegas Strip in the mid to late 1900s.

Cosmopolitan

Las Vegas has always been the epitome of glitz and excess, but there was a time when it became the birthplace of the greatest entertainment shows inspired by the famous dancers of the Folies Bergère in Paris.

PetaPixel

A group of University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) students have painstakingly preserved a photographer’s archive by digitizing it and making it available online to anyone. Six students worked on the project over the course of two to preserve the work of Clinton Wright, a press photographer who documented Black life in the Westside neighborhood of Las Vegas in the 1960s.

KVVU-TV: Fox 5

UNLV students are hard at work preserving the images and records of Las Vegas photographer Clinton Wright, whose decades of work shed light into African American life and experience in the 1960s and beyond.

Associated Press

Crystal chandeliers that once glimmered above a swanky lounge, bright blue costume feathers that cloaked shimmying showgirls, and fake palm trees that evoked a desert oasis are just some the artifacts making their way from the latest latest casino graveyards of Las Vegas into Sin City history.

Gambling News

Bally’s Corporation, the operator of the to-be-imploded Tropicana Las Vegas, has agreed to donate a variety of memorabilia to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The casino company was contacted by the university’s Special Collections and Archives department, which wanted to preserve a part of the historic resort.

Casino.org

After it’s imploded on Wednesday morning, the best way to relive memories of the Tropicana Las Vegas will be to head two miles east of the vacant lot to UNLV. Nevada’s largest university recently received five boxes of history from the Rat Pack-era casino resort, most of which it has processed and made available for public perusal — both in person and online.

KSNV-TV: News 3

The iconic Tropicana Hotel, a fixture on the Las Vegas Strip for 67 years, is set to be demolished next Wednesday. The historic property, which closed its doors in April, will make way for a new Major League Baseball stadium.