"Each summer in Las Vegas of late years there is a pleasant incident for Delphine and me when a lady appears at our front door with a box of lovely grapes, peaches and figs. She is Mrs. J.T. McWilliams, who has lived in this country longer than any of us and whose husband was tops among the early developers of Las Vegas.

It was early in the 'nineties when the young surveyor and engineer came to this country and settled at the promising mining camp of Goodsprings, about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas springs and ranch. There was considerable activity then in the mining camp and a surveyor was needed to mark the boundaries of mining claims and the route for a water canal here and there to water the ranches of Pahrump Valley.

McWilliams found plenty of employment for his engineering talents even at that early day, one call coming to him from Kingman, Arizona. At Kingman he met and married the little lady who every summer brings us fruit from her lovely home on Westside, Las Vegas, and took her to Goodsprings, about the year 1894, I am told.

When the rumor that Senator William A. Clark was planning to build a railroad from SAlt Lake to Los Angeles became generally known, it was assumed, of course, that it would pass through Las Vegas where the great springs would provide ample water for railroad operation and for a new town. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Steward, owners of a couple of thousand acres of land here and the right to the water of the great springs, naturally were very much interested. So they sent to Goodsprings and asked McWilliams to survey and mark the boundaries of their large Las Vegas ranch. Mac came over and did the work. And, since rumors of a railroad continued, he took up an 80 acres of land adjoining the Stewart Ranch.

In 1902, Senator Clark paid Mrs. Stewart $2,000 for an option for one year to purchase 1,800 acres of the Las Vegas ranch with the rights in the waters of Las Vegas Springs. Everything was 'Jake' with Las Vegas then. The railroad was surely coming and Las Vegas would be made a division point, it was reported on good authority. And about that time Mr. and Mrs. McWilliams moved over to Las Vegas from Good springs and camped on their 80 acres of land.

The year rolled around - and Senator Clark forfeited his $2,000 option payment. Railroad engineers got busy surveying water canals in Moapa Valley, where the Muddy River provided plenty of water. Everybody saw at once that Las Vegas had been fooled. Those who had camped in and around Las Vegas Ranch, pulled up stakes, loaded their belongings on burros and made the long, hot, dry trip to Moapa, so as to be there when the new town was opened.

Again something unforeseen happened. Senator Clark through his agent again approached the Stewards and opened the subject of buying the Las Vegas Ranch. Thinking that perhaps their former price of $65,000 for the ranch had been considered too high, the Stewarts offered to sell for $55,000. The offer was promptly accepted and the 'sooners' retraced their weary steps back from Moapa to Las Vegas.

By this time McWilliams had his land all surveyed into lots and filed his subdivision as 'Original Townsite of Las Vegas.' This was annoying to the railroad people who were planning the 'Original' townsite of Las Vegas as the name of their subdivision. However, McWilliams sold hundreds of lots at $50 each. A thriving town of shacks and tents sprang up, with half a dozen prosperous saloons and the other business houses. So strong was sentiment in favor of McWilliams' subdivision that it was the general impress among those in Las Vegas that the railroad had been beaten - that the railroad townsite never would be able to compete with the big start that the 'Original Townsite of Las Vegas' had.

The railroad, after several annoying postponements and delays, got around to holding its auction sale of lots in 'Clark's Las Vegas Townsite' on May 15-16, 1905, teams and wagons loaded with shacks and tents and merchandise and household goods were seeking the surveyors' stakes showing the locations of the lots they had bought at the auction. The activity was great along First Street in Blocks 1 and 16, and along Fremont Street between Main and Second, although there were really no streets, just surveyors' stakes in the desert.

In a few days there were several frame buildings housing saloons (in Block 16) and stores on Fremont, including the first little building of boards at First and Fremont, which housed First State Bank.

But McWilliamstown refused to give up. A theatre, 'The Trocadero,' quite pretentious for that time, was planned for McWilliamstown, to be completed about July 1. Other buildings were planned and those who had been in business there for several months still believed that McWilliamstown would be the real business center for Las Vegas.

During that long, hot, dusty, fly-bitten summer of 1905 there was rivalry between Clark's 'Las Vegas Townsite' and McWilliams' 'The Original Townsite of Las Vegas,' which through the months had become more and more shabby until it had not the ambition to resent the appellation 'Ragtown' applied to it by some of the scornful residents of Clark's Las Vegas Townsite. The end of what had been the real live Las Vegas came in the evening of Tuesday, September 5, 1905. Jim Brown, editor of the Las Vegas Times, wrote of it in his florid style:

'The Old Town is but a memory. It does not even bear today the significance of a desert village.

In its day it was a roisterer with all the vitality and spirit of a typical frontier Rag Town. Bustle, hustle, and jostle was its lot when it was in the heyday of its existence. All this is gone. It was - it is - a has-been. The ending of it was characteristic of its time, because it had fire, and fire consumed it. The cry went forth, 'The Old Town is burning up!'

What excitement, what intensity of feeling it aroused. Pell mell they all rushed. With a crash and a roar, the flames with an intense luridity shot skyward. How grand the fierce fiend locked at his work! As it swept and blazed and rushed, it left in its trail destruction and ashes of what once had been the scene of vigor and life.

It is but to relate, the Original Las Vegas has had its day. The demon fire gave it its finishing touches. Railroad street, the once busy mart, is but ashes. No hope that, Phoenix-like, it will rise again.'

My old friend, Jim Brown, long since cross the dark river. I hope he is able to look down and see the city of today. Westside, where Ragtown once was! What changes time has wrought!

What I am trying to say is that Mrs. McWilliams still lives in the lovely home her husband built for her many years ago and every summer we hear from 'Our Lady of the Grapes.'