"About the Ponies. Some of the old-timers of Las Vegas began to promote a race track quite a while ago, although Joe Smoot was the chap who really made the thing a reality.

More than 38 years ago we were pinning our hopes for greatness on the race horse business. In the Las Vegas Age of date March 30, 1912, was a two-column front-page article with three banks of showy headlines, written by 'C.P. Squires.'

'Winter Racing Las Vegas - Land Adjoining This City Secured by Racing Syndicate - Eight Hundred Race Horses Will Spend Winter Months in This Balmy Clime

Mayor Buol reports that Vegas may soon become the center of the racing interests of the West during the winter months.

A powerful syndicate of racing men have leased from Messrs. Buol and Jackson a quarter section of land adjoining the Crouse ranch and will construct therein a race track with all the necessary adjuncts of stables, grand stands, etc., found in the great racing courses of the country.

Beginning about Thanksgiving Day of each year, Vegas will be the headquarters for racing and training about 800 thoroughbred horses. This will bring an army of workmen and attendants as well as several thousand lovers of the sport from all over the world, to remain here until the weather will permit of opening the season father north.

Juarez, Mexico, is at present the winter training quarters of this circuit, and owing to the many disadvantages which arise on account of the location, the managers desire to establish quarters elsewhere. Las Vegas has been under consideration for some time as an ideal location for such an enterprise and Mayor Buol, while in Los Angeles, has succeeded in making the necessary arrangements to bring the matter about.

At present the circuit comprises Butte, Montana; Allen, Idaho; Spokane, Wash; and Salt Lake City, Utah, with Juarez as winter quarters. It is now proposed to winter in this city with a 110-day meet to fill in the time when it is impossible to race further north.'

So you see, Mr. Joe Smoot, that you, 38 years after that gleam of high hope came to us who visioned Las Vegas as the ideal place for a race horse breeding, training and wintering enterprising, are nicely carrying out our plans, although, we admit, on a more elaborate and costly scale than we could in those days visualize.

That was not the only vision of racing in Las Vegas during the 45 years since the town was hatched. Dr. Roy W. Martin, for more than 35 years Las Vegas' most ardent dreamer and prophet of the Las Vegas of today, many times "almost" brought a race track to Las Vegas. That great man Leigh Hunt, one of the world's greatest thinkers, planners and explorers, came to Las Vegas in the 1920s, saw the wonderful possibility for resort hotels, race tracks and health resorts, and bought for himself and associates a large amount of land. On that land, due to the cooperation of Mr. Henry Hunt, son of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Hunt, the great racing enterprise now well along toward completion, is being built by Mr. Smoot.

It is with a mixture of satisfaction and sorry that I look back on those with whom I worked, worried, hoped and prayed for the fine things Las Vegas people are doing today. Satisfaction that some of us with the spirit of optimism could believe in the future of Las Vegas. Sorry that those men and many others who had the vision to see the future and the courage to spend their time and money to lay the foundations for modern Las Vegas, could not have lived to see the great mental picture they were painting become the solid reality of today.

I seem to be running to race tacks lately (just like the ponies) but to me the great enterprise rising from the sands of the desert half a mile each of Highway 91, a little way south of the city limits, is the flowering of our hopes. I do not apologize for the failure of Peter Buol's plans of 38 years to ripen. That was 38 years too soon, but it helped spread the ideas - the great foundations on which today's enterprises are built.

Now, with two million people with the city limits of Los Angeles and six million or more in all of Southern California, there is nothing lacking to insure success. A visitor to Las Vegas a few days ago remarked in my hearing, 'How does Las Vegas expect to support such an expensive enterprise as this new race track?'

My answer would be, 'Las Vegas does not have to support it. There are six million people, most of them lovers of horse racing, within five or six hours of Las Vegas, who will fill every hotel and auto court to overflowing during the time the Southern California tracks are not operating. The great problem for Las Vegas just now is to provide accommodations for the thousands of visitors who will come to us while the ponies are running.'

Instead of competing with other lines of entertainment, the new track will bring additional business and prosperity to every Las Vegas enterprise. Which reminds me that my friend, Hank Greenspun, the other day was giving some 'buy at home' advise to the people of Las Vegas which, for their own advantage, they should follow. It was both true and timely. The people of Las Vegas should realize the fact that in practically every line of merchandising they can find better bargains in Las Vegas stores than in Los Angeles.

The reason for this is obvious. Store rentals and expenses of operation are less here than in that teeming city of two million people. Merchants there pay the same wholesale price for goods as do those in Las Vegas. Las Vegas merchants have the advantage of all Los Angeles pre-season showings and often are able to avoid the 'dead ones' which Los Angeles stores have tried out.

We knew, a while back, two clever women from New York who stopped in Las Vegas a few days. They were out for a vacation but, incidentally, planned to buy a lot of new clothes in Los Angeles.

After their Los Angeles vacation they stopped again in Las Vegas on their way home. The women here were anxious to see what they had bought, and they answered:

'We decided to do our buying in Las Vegas. After canvassing the stores in Hollywood and the big city, we found we could save a lot of money by buying everything we want here. Prices are less and assortments just as good or better.'

So they bought a lot of new clothes right here in Las Vegas because they could do better here. Hundreds of others have had a similar experience. This idea of running down to Los Angeles every time you want to buy something is to your own disadvantage if you really want to save money. I would wager (anyhow Hank would) that some of these days people will be dropping in from Los Angeles to take advantage of the bargains in our stores and incidentally to the races in the afternoon and dinner and a show in one of our great hotels in the evenings. We here in Las Vegas can offer everything Los Angeles can and a whole lot more. It may sound strange to some but it is so, nevertheless, and becoming more and more so. Besides, No Smog!"