In late December 1899 Las Vegas pioneer Helen J. Stewart faced the new century with much heaviness in her heart.
Her youngest son, Archie, had been killed earlier that year in a horse riding accident on her ranch adjacent to the historic Mormon Fort, the city's oldest surviving structure.
Just 15 years earlier Helen was pregnant with Archie when her husband, Archibald Stewart, went to the Kiel Ranch in what is now North Las Vegas to settle a score with his hired hand, Schuyler Henry. Archibald was shot dead by Schuyler.
In late 1899 at the Kiel Ranch on what is now Carey Avenue near Losee Road, 53-year-old Edwin Kiel awaited the new century with some anticipation.
His brother, William Kiel, 51, would join him in early 1900 to run the property that was left them by their father, Southern Nevada pioneer Conrad Kiel, who had died in 1894.
But, in a fashion common in the gunslinging Old West, the Kiel boys would not live to see another New Year's Day after Jan. 1, 1900.
Several miles west of the Stewart and Kiel ranches was the Sandstone Ranch, where owner James Wilson faced the new century with hope. But because of his advanced age he knew he would not live to see too much of it.
Wilson had been a longtime Las Vegas resident, having operated in the 1870s a ranch on land that is adjacent to the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society at Lorenzi Park.
Together with his two adopted sons, Paiute Indians Jim and Tweed, James would build his new property into a successful operation that was later sold and today is the Spring Mountain Ranch State Park.
That's pretty much all there was to Las Vegas -- three ranches and 18 residents -- at the time of the countdown to the last double aught New Year.
At the turn of the century, the state had 42,335 residents -- down sharply from the gold and silver mining boom of 1880 when 62,266 people called Nevada home. Reno was the state's largest city with 4,500 residents, according to the 1900 Census.
Las Vegas was a far cry from the gambling and tourism mecca it is today with over a million residents and nearly a quarter-million visitors expected in town Friday to observe the end of the 20th century.
"There is nothing to indicate Las Vegans had celebrations for the New Year back then," said Frank Wright, a longtime local historian and curator of the Nevada State Museum. "At that time, the Fourth of July, Labor Day and Christmas were the big holidays.
"Celebrations for those holidays lasted three days because the travel was so long. Each of the three Las Vegas ranches and three Pahrump ranches at the time would take turns hosting the major holiday celebrations."
The 19th century holiday feasts the Stewarts, Kiels and Wilsons attended were typical Old West barbecue affairs.
"They had a diet that consisted of vegetables from their farms and fruit from their orchards," Wright said. "And of course they raised cattle, which they ate."
Times were hard in Las Vegas as the 19th century turned, Wright said, noting that 1899 marked the tail end of what had been a 20-year depression.
Residents of the desert community had no air conditioning for relief on blistering 110-degree summer days.
Although gambling was legal in Nevada, there were no casinos in Las Vegas in 1899.
And there were no neon lights. Electricity was still relatively new in 1899, as Thomas Edison had invented the incandescent lamp just 21 years earlier.
The automobile existed, but not in Las Vegas, where the roads at the time were narrow dirt paths barely suitable for horse-drawn wagons and buggies.
The airplane, which later became an important part of the booming growth of Las Vegas, was still three years from being invented by Orville and Wilbur Wright.
There was little trade in Las Vegas as the once-prosperous gold and silver mines had been thought to have been tapped out. That would change early in the 20th century.
And with no computers, folks of that era did not fret Y1.9K compliance.
At the turn of the last century, Helen Stewart, with the help of her two oldest sons, ran the Stewart Ranch that also served as a merchant post and an inn for weary travelers who braved the hot, dusty trails between Utah and California.
In 1899 Stewart also was postmistress of what had been designated the "Los Vegas" post office by the federal government. The name was intentionally misspelled to avoid confusion with mail en route to the then-much larger city of Las Vegas, N.M.
At the turn of the last century, Las Vegas was part of Lincoln County. It was not until 1909 that Clark County was formed. The census of 1900 showed that 18 people lived in Las Vegas.
In the late 1890s the relationship between the Stewart clan and the Kiels was, at best, strained. Helen had blamed Conrad Kiel and outlaw Hank Parrish for luring Archibald there in 1884 to have him killed by Schuyler Henry, leaving her alone to raise their four children and unborn son Archie, who died in July 1899.
A coroner's jury in Pioche ruled that Schuyler Henry had killed an armed Archibald Stewart in self-defense and thus would not have to face murder charges -- a ruling that undoubtedly widened the rift between Helen Stewart's family and the Kiel boys.
In October 1900 Edwin and William Kiel were found shot to death on the Kiel Ranch. Strangely enough the two men who found the bodies were Stewart's son, William, and her hired hand Frank Stewart, who despite having the same last name was not related to Helen. However, Frank Stewart later married the widow Helen Stewart.
The coroner ruled the Kiels' deaths a murder-suicide, sparking a controversy that would take three-quarters of this century to resolve.
In the mid-1970s UNLV forensic anthropologists exhumed the bones of Edwin and William Kiel. After careful examination, the findings were that their deaths were a double murder, not a murder-suicide.
Wright said that much of what we know about the turn of the century in Las Vegas comes from Helen Stewart's writings. Indications are that she and other Las Vegans of that time did not foresee the incredible growth that was to begin early in the 1900s.
Five years into the new century, William Clark held the auction of railroad parcels that created Las Vegas, which became a township in 1906 and an incorporated city in 1911, the year its population swelled to 800 residents.
But perhaps the biggest boon to Las Vegas occurred a couple hundred miles north of the city in May 1900 when down-on-his-luck prospector Jim Butler discovered a major silver ore deposit that revitalized the mining industry and made Tonopah a boomtown.
In turn, Las Vegas within four years became an important railroad construction and freighting camp for those mining operations.
"Butler's discovery meant we were off to the races," Wright said.
Helen Stewart would live to see and chronicle much of that early growth. A Las Vegas school is named for Stewart, who died in 1926.
Legend has it that the ghosts of Archibald Stewart and Edwin and William Kiel still haunt the ranch grounds. An Aug. 18, 1992, fire destroyed the historic Park Mansion on the Kiel Ranch at 200 E. Carey Road. Today, the city of North Las Vegas and preservationists are trying to restore the Kiel Ranch.
James Wilson died in 1906. After the Wilson place was sold, Wilson's adopted sons were allowed to live and work there for the rest of their lives. Jim died in 1943 and Tweed died in 1959. They are buried along with James Wilson at the Spring Mountain Ranch State Park.
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