Las Vegas High through the years

Thursday, Oct. 30, 2003 | 11:26 a.m.

A history of Las Vegas High School as compiled from Sun news stories and Clark County School District records:

1909 -- High school classes are held in the first elementary school at Second Street and Lewis Avenue and in the old First Methodist Church at Third Street and Bridger Avenue.

1911 -- High school classes are moved to Clark County High School No. 1 at Fourth Street and Bridger Avenue, the precursor to Las Vegas High. Seventeen students enroll.

Dec. 17, 1917 -- Las Vegas High School, built at a cost of $42,500, opens at Fourth Street and Clark Avenue with 51 students. It becomes an elementary school annex in 1930 and is destroyed by fire on May 11, 1934.

1921 -- A $350,000 bond issue is approved to build a new Las Vegas High School on two blocks of donated land at the corner of Seventh Street and Bridger Avenue. (In 1940 the final two blocks of the downtown school are purchased for $8,000.)

1930 -- The new Las Vegas High School, a three-story art deco building, is dedicated at Seventh and Bridger on Nov. 2. A month later popular athletics coach and mathematics teacher Frank Butcher is burned to death in a gasoline fire. The sports field on the campus is named for him.

1941 -- A senior student, as a prank, paints a red "41" on the sidewalk in front of the school on Seventh Street. Principal Maude Frazier thinks it is not such a bad idea, and, after World War II, begins the tradition of the "senior squares."

1944 -- Coach Harvey Stanford's football squad goes undefeated, untied and is unscored upon, earning a place in "Ripley's Believe it or Not." Four members of the team go on to become prominent Las Vegas attorneys: Myron Leavitt, Bill "Wildcat" Morris, John Mendoza and Tom Bell.

1947 -- The Las Vegas Rhythmettes dance troop is formed, inspired by New York's Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. The Rhythmettes later gain national fame by appearing on the "Ed Sullivan Show."

1949 -- Frazier Hall, named for former principal and Las Vegas Union School District Superintendent Maude Frazier, is built.

1952 -- Coach Angelo Collis' Wildcat football squad goes 10-0, defeating powerful Southern California teams and earning the No. 1 ranking on the West Coast by the Los Angeles Times.

1959 -- Las Vegas and Rancho High begin the tradition of playing their annual football game for the Sir Herkimer Bone, a trophy made from an old soup bone and kept in the victorious school's trophy case between games.

1980 -- The 50th anniversary of the first classes at the Seventh Street campus of "The Jewel of the Desert" is observed. That summer an uproar is created when incoming Prinicpal Mike Edwards has the senior squares sandblasted. The squares are rebuilt with a mosaic-type material and the tradition continues.

May 1985 -- U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett recognizes Las Vegas High as one of 277 model secondary schools in the nation.

February 1987 -- Then-Nevada Gov. Richard Bryan, a 1955 Las Vegas High graduate, signs bills preserving the school as a historic landmark.

1989 -- The senior class decides to discontinue the senior squares tradition.

March 1991 -- Las Vegas High is placed on the National Registrar of Historic Places.

September 1992 -- The school board decides to move students at antiquated Las Vegas High to a new school at 6500 E. Sahara Ave., tentatively named Winchester High. Las Vegas High students and alumni fight to keep the school name, nickname, black and red school colors and its history for the new school and the School Board approves the request on Sept. 22. The old campus is renamed the Las Vegas Academy of International Studies and the Performing Arts.

1993 -- The new $26 million Las Vegas High campus opens in the shadow of Sunrise Mountain with more than 2,400 students. Its first class graduates in the spring of 1994.

2002 -- The recreated senior square mosaics at the old downtown campus fall into irreparable decay and are removed by an alumni group to make way for a permanent recreation of the senior squares.

2003 -- A permanent senior square replication for the classes of 1941 to 1988 is slated to begin this weekend on the sidewalk in front of the old downtown school. The money for the project comes from an alumni group raising $5,000 privately and from a $17,000 state grant.