Award Date

5-1-2022

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Committee Member

William Bauer

Second Committee Member

Tessa Winkelmann

Third Committee Member

Michael Green

Fourth Committee Member

Todd Robinson

Fifth Committee Member

Constancio Arnaldo

Number of Pages

117

Abstract

Cashman Field is a minor league sport stadium one-mile north of the world famous “Fremont Street Experience” in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. Minor league sports stadiums are microcosms of their communities, and Cashman Field’s history is Las Vegas’s history. Although the city’s first permanent sports venue, the stadium endured numerous cycles of colonialism, stadium building, successful operation, neglect, decay, and abandonment. Now at the end of another cycle, Cashman Field is being forgotten as Las Vegas transitions into a major league sports town. Sports stadiums reveal the social, cultural, and economic factors that define twentieth-century American history, but Cashman Field’s specific site is too important to Las Vegas’s history to be silenced and erased. The locations was a reliable water source for the Southern Paiutes, center of the local Elks club’s city-promoting Helldorado frontier festival, and home to Las Vegas’s first professional sports teams. Oral histories, newspaper articles, and sporting event attendance figures reveal Cashman Field as an essential site of civic engagement, social interaction, and resistance in Las Vegas’s contested outdoor recreation and sporting landscape.

Keywords

Las Vegas; Recreation; Sports; Sports Venues; Stadiums

Disciplines

History | United States History

File Format

pdf

File Size

2700 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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