LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Kelli Luchs spends her days surrounded by nearly five million photo negatives at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Authority Archives, preserving what she calls the largest photographic record of Las Vegas history in the world.
The collection began in 1947 when the news bureau started as part of the Chamber of Commerce, Luchs said. It was a team of photojournalists whose goal was to market the destination.
The news bureau had unfiltered access to every property in town, capturing iconic moments throughout Las Vegas history. The archive includes photos from an Elvis dinner program in 1971 at the International and five color negatives of The Beatles performing in August 1964 at the Convention Center, though they stayed at the Sahara.
Rare finds and personal favorites
Among Luchs’ favorite pieces is a manuscript featuring Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali. The promotional material still billed him as Cassius Clay even after he changed his name, something Luchs said she would like to research further.
“It’s actually after he changed their name, but they still billed him as Cassius. I would love to do research on that and figure out why,” she said.
One unexpected discovery came when Luchs found an envelope labeled Sister Teresa. Inside were photos of Mother Teresa visiting Las Vegas in 1960, a fact largely unknown to historians and the public.
“This was mostly an unknown fact. I talked to a lot of historians. I talked to a lot of people. Nobody knew Mother Teresa came to Vegas,” Luchs said.
Preserving entertainment history
Luchs is currently fulfilling a request related to Sammy Davis Jr., whose 100th birthday would have been December 8. She said Davis represents her favorite part of the archive because of his 40-year connection to Las Vegas.
“This has just been one of those, you know, true joys as part of my job that I absolutely love because I’m looking at, I love Sammy Davis Jr.,” she said. “To have that connection in addition to his rich history in Las Vegas, really you cross like a 40-year span, that one means a lot to me.”
The archive also houses larger artifacts, including Arnold Palmer’s golf clubs and a signed basketball from the 1990 UNLV championship team.
Solo preservation mission
Luchs has been curating and preserving the collection since 2013, when she became the first archivist hired for the position. What became a solo mission in 2022 after the news bureau disbanded requires her to juggle photo requests, preservation work and cataloging.
“I have been here since 2013. I was the first archivist they hired. I got to start from the ground up. Creating the policies, processing guidelines, metadata standards,” she said.
One of her major projects involves rehousing nearly 200,000 envelopes into acid-free containers to extend the lifetime of the negatives by hundreds of years. She refers to her solo work as being a “lone ranger.”
“Well, it’s an honor first because this collection is amazing. It really has some of the coolest, most significant pieces of Vegas history in the world,” Luchs said. “I want to preserve this collection for future generations so I’m constantly juggling photo requests, preservation, cataloging, processing.”
Personal connection to history
Luchs said her interest in history began at age eight, but a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Israel at 16 solidified her career path as a public historian.
“It was at that point, watching everybody have an emotional response to history, that I knew this is what I wanted to do,” she said. “I always tell everybody, I have the best job in Vegas. I get to look through history all day long, and then I get to share the gems with the public.”
The archive went public a little over a year ago, and Luchs hopes more people will explore Las Vegas’s documented past.
“Vegas is full of excitement, neon and sequins. It’s just, there’s just so much excitement about what this town has done and what it still does. And you can see it in this collection,” she said.
For anyone wanting to take a tour of the LVCVA archive, reach out to Kelli Luchs at [email protected].
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