Charlene Cruze:  

"Char" and the City of Las Vegas grew up together. Her parents were living at "Vegas Camp"in 1941 when she was born. There were 8,000 people in the valley. They built their first home where the present day Stratosphere Tower now stands, at the beginning of the fabulous Las Vegas Strip. The year she was born, the first resort hotel was built. WWII had brought the military to the area and from that dynamic era on, there was a growing love affair between this young lady and an emerging metropolis. Her family goes back four generations. In 1855, her great-grandfather helped with the first settlement in Las Vegas. Her great-grandmother became the first school teacher in Clark County. Her grandparents helped build the first railroad station in 1905, (the year Las Vegas became a city). Her parents began trucking and road building operations in 1927 as the Boulder Canyon Project began (Hoover Dam). They built many of the first roads in Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California, including HWY 91. Char retains her father's I.C.C. permit, the first ever issued in the State of Nevada. With a father in the construction business and a beautiful mother (usually dressed in satin and lace), she was introduced to a world of ballet, piano, road construction and mining. A stream of blue construction language was as natural to her ear as the language of classical music. She grew up through a childhood of dreams and dirt. Practicing her dancing on the flat bed of a diesel truck, tripping her fingers over the keyboard of an old upright piano from the Red Rooster Bar, driving her Dad's heavy equipment through the desert and listening to the songs of the wind through the cottonwood trees. Being born the same year as the arrival of the mafia and the military has provided some very interesting history. She was fortunate to have experienced the freedom and harmony of a clean desert environment while riding horseback through the mesquite and creosote. She grew to appreciate the untouched beauty of areas like Redrock, Valley of Fire and Mt. Charleston. She swam in pools of natural artsian water at the old ranch and twin lakes and the concrete pools of the first hotels on the Strip. She attended the opening of Bugsy's famous Flamingo Hotel in 1946 with her mother and father, saw Elvis' first appearance in 1956, caught the Beatles on their world tour and grew up listening to old-timers tell of the history and beauty of the west through stories and songs. Now a wide variety of events round out her week including workshops, commissioned art and calligraphy work, business meetings and touring our visitors around Las Vegas, through the Mojave Desert, and into canyonlands, ghost towns and Indian sites around the area. Proud of her heritage, Char enjoys providing professional tour services for the many delegates and visitors that arrive here. Her love of the land is apparent as she shares her special perspective of southern Nevada, Indian cultures and legends. She is a storyteller and is recording many of these stories in written form as her legacy ...Expand for more