Original Homesite Of A Las Vegas Pioneer "Pop" Squires
Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Original Homesite Of A Las Vegas Pioneer “Pop” Squires 1865 1958. Charles “Pop” Squires, often referred to as “the Father of Las Vegas,” lived at this location, with his wife Delphine, from 1931 until his death in 1958.Squires first arrived in the Las Vegas Valley in February 1905. He and his partners established a lumberyard, a tent hotel, a real estate firm, and the First State Bank. In March 1906, “Pop” assisted in the formation of the Consolidated Power & Telephone Company, bringing electricity and phone service to the new town.In 1908, Squires and his wife purchased the community’s only newspaper, the Las Vegas Age. Squires campaigned for the creation of Clark County in 1909. He subsequently worked on incorporating Las Vegas into a city. With his wife and the voice of their newspaper, the couple became advocates for women’s suffrage. As a member of the League of the Southwest and the Colorado River Commission, Squires helped advance plans that eventually led to the construction of Hoover Dam.Upon “Pop’s” passing, Las Vegas Sun reporter Bob Faiss wrote, “It seems strange that Las Vegas, a modern boomtown … should owe so much to the foresight of one man. But there is little we have today that wasn’t given an initial shove by ‘Pop’ Squires.”
Erected by Nevada State Historic Preservation Office
The Story
Charles 'Pop' Squires, often called the 'Father of Las Vegas,' arrived in the valley in 1905 and lived at this site with his wife Delphine from 1931 until his death in 1958. He launched a lumberyard, hotel, real estate firm, and bank, brought electricity and telephone service to the new town, and in 1908 bought its only newspaper, the Las Vegas Age. Through that paper the Squireses championed the creation of Clark County, women's suffrage, and the river plans that led to Hoover Dam.
Why it matters
Squires embodies the outsized role a single civic booster could play in willing a modern Western city into existence in the early twentieth century.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Charles "Pop" Squires stepped into the Las Vegas Valley in February 1905, there was barely a town to speak of, just a promising stop in the desert where the railroad and reliable water met. This was the raw beginning of the Progressive and Modern Era in the Southwest, when a settlement's future depended on a handful of people willing to build its institutions from scratch.
The Las Vegas of those first years needed everything at once: places to buy lumber, somewhere to sleep, a bank to hold money, a way to buy and sell land, and the modern utilities that turned a camp into a community. It was a moment when a single energetic newcomer could shape the character of a place for a century to come, simply because so little existed yet.
Squires lived at this homesite with his wife Delphine from 1931 until his death in 1958, but his defining work began in that first decade, when the valley was still deciding what it would become.
People & events
Squires arrived in 1905 and immediately started building the machinery of a town. With partners he established a lumberyard, a tent hotel, a real estate firm, and the First State Bank, the essential organs of a new economy. In March 1906 he helped form the Consolidated Power and Telephone Company, bringing electricity and telephone service to the young settlement, the very sinews of modern life.
In 1908 he and Delphine bought the community's only newspaper, the Las Vegas Age, and that purchase turned a businessman into a civic force. With a printing press behind him, Squires campaigned for the creation of Clark County in 1909 and then worked to incorporate Las Vegas as a city. He and Delphine used the paper's voice together, and the marker is careful to name them both as advocates for women's suffrage, a shared cause that makes hers a name to remember alongside his.
His reach extended to the river that would remake the region. As a member of the League of the Southwest and the Colorado River Commission, Squires helped advance the plans that eventually led to the construction of Hoover Dam. When he died in 1958, a Las Vegas Sun reporter, Bob Faiss, captured the whole arc of the man, marveling that a modern boomtown should owe so much to one person's foresight, and observing that there was little the city had that Squires hadn't given an initial shove.
Its place in the American story
Squires embodies a distinctly American figure: the civic booster who, in the early twentieth-century West, could almost single-handedly will a modern city into being. Before zoning boards and municipal bureaucracies, the founding of a town often came down to whether a few determined people would start the bank, string the wires, and print the newspaper. He did all three.
His life also traces how the modern Southwest was actually assembled, piece by piece: local institutions first, then county government, then city incorporation, and finally the vast federal water projects that made large desert cities possible at all. The line from a tent hotel in 1905 to a role in the plans behind Hoover Dam runs straight through this homesite.
And the marker's insistence on Delphine, and on their joint advocacy for women's suffrage, connects the story to a national movement. The fight for the vote was won not only in great cities but in new Western towns like this one, where a couple with a newspaper could push the argument into print.
If you visit
This is a homesite marker in the heart of a city that has utterly transformed around it, so come ready to use your imagination more than your camera. The value here is the jolt of contrast: standing where a founder of Las Vegas lived and picturing the small desert town he arrived to in 1905, set against everything the valley became.
Read the marker slowly and let the list of firsts sink in, the first bank, the first utilities, the town's only newspaper. It reframes Las Vegas not as a place that sprang up overnight but as one that people like Pop and Delphine Squires built deliberately, institution by institution. That is a very different Las Vegas than the one most visitors picture.
It makes a rewarding stop for travelers who want the city's origin story rather than its neon, and it pairs naturally with the larger Clark County and Hoover Dam narrative that Squires helped set in motion. Give Delphine her due while you're here; the marker does, and so should you.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Charles 'Pop' Squires
- · Delphine Squires
Related events
- · Creation of Clark County, 1909
- · Construction of Hoover Dam
Themes & tags
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