Charles "Pop" Squires, "Father of Las Vegas"

Charles Pember Squires was a businessman from California who in 1903 became secretary and manager of the "Union League Club" of Los Angeles. While there he learned of a plan to extend Southern California's first railroad all the way to Salt Lake City. This plan would require that a new town be created in the Las Vegas Valley which contained the necessary water resources in an otherwise arid region. Charles Squires smelled opportunity.

Making his way to Las Vegas, Squires and some business partners established the First State Bank. He also established a lumberyard, a real estate firm and a hotel made out of a massive 30-room tent. Then on May 15th, 1905 Charles Squires (his friends referred to him as "Pop") attended the land auction and purchased numerous parcels of land - including the entire block between fourth and fifth streets. He built his first Las Vegas home at Fourth and Fremont.

Pop Squires worked to make the rough-and-tumble, sometimes lawless new city of Las Vegas a safer place. As an example, he is credited with controlling human waste to reduce fly infestations. One of his greatest concerns, however, was the threat posed by the many fires that kept erupting in the town due to kerosene lamp accidents. To reduce the use of these lamps Pop Squires established the Consolidated Power and Telephone Company on March 20th, 1906.


The newly-formed electric and telephone company brought 100 kilowatts of electricity to the town, along with their first fifty telephones. One of those telephones was installed in an office Pops maintained at the Hotel Nevada (now Golden Gate) located at 1 Fremont Street. The legend goes that Pop's telephone number was "1" although this may be a bit of a dramatization.

In 1908 times were extremely difficult and many people left the town of Las Vegas. Those who stayed mostly did so for lack of any better options in life. Most people were unemployed and investments in new development would grind to a virtual standstill. Charles Squires contemplated leaving the town for good. But then a man named C. W. Nicklin approached Pops and offered to sell his newspaper, the last remaining of three in the town. Pop refused a number of times but when Nicklin dropped his price too low to refuse, he accepted. For $2,300 Pop had become the voice of Las Vegas and would use this platform to promote his pro-Vegas views and gain influence in the town.

From there Pops became involved in civic matters, including politics. He served on the finance committee of the Lincoln Country Division Club which was instrumental in the creation of Clark County. He also drafted the charter for the city of Las Vegas and helped get it approved on March 17th, 1911. But one of Charles Squires' achievements was even bigger than everything he had accomplished until then. Squires approached Nevada's governor Emmett Boyle and convinced him to "deputize" Squires to push a massive plan to flood the Colorado River by building a massive dam.

The plan to build a dam became such a huge project that it was eventually assumed by the United States government, represented by Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. But this plan would likely never have gotten the attention it needed had it not been for Charles "Pop" Squires. The creation of Hoover Dam brought extreme prosperity to the dusty boomtown and changed the destiny of Las Vegas forever.

Charles "Pop" Squires sold his newspaper in 1940 to Frank Garside, owner of the Las Vegas Review Journal which remains in operation to this day.

He also sold a 40-acre tract of land in November 1944 to a woman named Margaret Folsom along the "Los Angeles Highway" for $7500. This land would become the property where Billy Wilkerson, and eventually Bugsy Siegel, would complete the Flamingo Hotel on what would become the "Las Vegas Strip" many years later.

In 2024 the website VegasHistory.org discovered that Charles Pop Squires did not have a Wikipedia page nor was he mentioned anywhere on the page for The History of Las Vegas and added him.