Desmond Stevens breaks Las Vegas down into two eras: before the volcano and after.
“It was a complete game changer,” says Stevens, one of the designers of the iconic, water-and-fire-spewing attraction at The Mirage. “The tables were turned in this city by what was down there on the Strip. (People) came, millions, to see this pyrotechnic display.”
This legacy was commemorated at the Neon Museum on Friday, where the Mirage Lagoon sign and a volcano fire-shooter were added to its collection during a ceremony attended by four of the volcano’s designers, among others.
The evening culminated in the lighting of the sign.
But that wasn’t the only thing illuminated on this night: Light was also shed on the unique history of this unique attraction initialized nearly 40 years ago by former Mirage owner Steve Wynn.
Five things we learned about The Mirage volcano from the event:
Designed with a certain morning TV show in mind
In addition to the aforementioned artifacts, there was a living history of The Mirage at the Neon Museum on Friday, as numerous former employees of the casino attended the ceremony.
Among them was Donna Silva, 80, who spent four years helping to oversee the making of the volcano as an assistant to London-based lighting designer David Hersey.
“When we first thought of the volcano, Mr. Wynn said, ‘If the “Today” show comes to Las Vegas, whatever you do to that water feature, I want the “Today” show to show it,’” she recalled. “When they say, ‘We’re going to Las Vegas — boom! — there’s the shot.’
“That’s what we had to think in terms of: the ‘Today’ show,” she continued. ‘They’re gonna say, ‘Las Vegas,’ and it’s got to be fantastic. It’s gotta be, like, fire and mist and flames.”
Check, check and check.
How the volcano came to smell like a tropical cocktail
Natural gas smells like rotten eggs by design: It’s infused with the scent during production to make leaks easily detectable.
But Wynn didn’t want his volcano to reek.
“Steve Wynn being Steve Wynn, he went and said, ‘I don’t really like that,’” Neon Museum Executive Director and CEO Aaron Berger said of the usual natural gas scent. “So they went up to the state of Nevada and changed the smell from that rotten egg smell to the smell of piña coladas.”
Keeping with the theme of the night, a piña colada scent was added to the museum’s misters on Friday.
A hairdo inspired the volcano’s purplish color
Wynn was vacationing abroad when the volcano was first painted in shades of desert red. He was less than thrilled by what he saw upon returning.
“When he came back, he said, ‘Who painted the volcano? It looks like Red Rock. This isn’t like a volcano,’” Silva recalled. “I had purple hair back then. He said, ‘Donna, what color is your hair?’ And I go, ‘They call it “aubergine,” eggplant color.’ He said, ‘That’s the color of a volcano.’
“Mr. Wynn pointed right at me,’” she continued. “‘Donna’s hair is the color, not Red Rock. This looks like the desert. We don’t want a desert here. We want a volcano.’”
Why is the lagoon sign so small?
Spanning 13 feet and weighing 400 pounds, the Mirage Lagoon sign packs plenty of heft.
But by the standards of Vegas, where bigger is always better, it was constructed with more modest proportions in mind.
There’s a reason for that.
“You think about this sign, and you’re all wondering why it’s so small,” noted Jon Sparer, one of The Mirage’s architects. “After The Mirage opened up, they realized very quickly that everybody was taking pictures of the volcano, looking up at The Mirage from the sidewalk.
“There was no signage there,” he continued. “So that sign was added to be in the background. So when you go back to your hometown, you couldn’t say, ‘I was in Tahiti.’ No, ‘I was at The Mirage.’”
There were actually two volcanoes
In addition to the iconic Mirage volcano that drew crowds for decades, a smaller version was also created with all the bells and whistles of its larger counterpart in order to test its numerous features before unveiling the attraction to the public.
“It was 15 feet tall and 30-plus feet wide,” Silva recalled of the latter volcano, which was located where The Mirage tiger habitat would later be constructed.
When this volcano was activated for the first time, it stopped traffic — literally.
“The water shoots up, the guy shoots off some of the fire, and I hear brakes on the Strip — cars just braking,” Silva remembered. “I hear these brakes, and I was like, ‘It works!’ I called my boss right away. When I heard those brakes, and they’re looking at this flame and all these trees and stuff that we’ve put there, I just knew, ‘It’s gonna work.’”
Contact Jason Bracelin at [email protected] or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.