Las Vegas harkens back to the Old West

Ed Koch and Kristen Peterson

Friday, May 13, 2005 | 9:10 a.m.

The revival of the Helldorado Parade on Fourth Street Saturday is designed to capture a taste of Las Vegas' cowboy past.

The eight-block parade, featuring more than 200 entries and 5,000 participants, will begin at 10 a.m. at Gass Avenue. It will travel northbound and end at Ogden Avenue.

The parade will feature floats and Western-themed participants including fiddlers, cloggers, equestrians and a tribute to late past Helldorado grand marshal Roy Rogers, who long was a popular cowboy film star and singer.

There will be 28 bands, including every high school band in the valley, except for Foothill of Henderson, which had a prior commitment, parade officials said.

The bands will be sprinkled throughout the parade in the order in which the schools were established. Las Vegas High, the valley's original secondary school, will lead the band contingent, parade officials said.

"There is a lot of coordinating to it," said Helldorado Parade Coordinator Esther Carter, noting that the parade is so huge, the first entries will finish before three quarters of the entries begin the route. "When you're dealing with this number of bodies, there is more to it than you'd imagine."

City officials estimate that 50,000 people will attend the parade.

To put on such a big event, city officials and Metro Police say they will have to close a number of the streets in the area for most of the day.

Shortly after midnight, Fourth Street will be closed at Bonneville, Carson and Clark avenues to build the VIP stands and news media platforms, Carter said.

At 6 a.m., roads along the entire parade route will be closed, Carter said, noting that Charleston Boulevard will remain open at Fourth Street and that the floats staged along Fourth Street south of Charleston will move north as traffic lights allow.

Metro Police and city officials estimate that the parade will last four hours, perhaps longer.

Many of the entries will be staged along east-west roads south of Gass Avenue and be fed into the Fourth Street route according to their assigned entry position, which Carter said is changing daily. Some groups have canceled and late entries are being assigned to fill their spots, she said.

Police say that, because of cleanup of the streets and dismantling of the stands, some roads in the area are not expected to reopen until about 5 p.m.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman will serve as the parade's grand marshal. He will follow the parade's lead entry, the Nellis Air Force Base Color Guard.

The Helldorado Days celebration, which in its heyday featured three parades, a rodeo, beauty contest and other festivities, began in the 1930s and ended in 1999 because of contractual problems with the event's sponsor.

Centennial officials say they brought back some elements of Helldorado, including the Western Village, Whiskerino beard-growing contest and the parade to tie modern Las Vegas to its rural past for the city's 100th birthday.