Proving Riverboats Wrong: Laughlin’s River Rick is not the Original Vegas Vic

Blonde4ever busts a riverboat myth concerning our favorite Vegas cowboy…

I recently wrote an article about a day trip I took to Laughlin and the Celebration Boat ride I went on.

I enjoy learning about the history of an area, so I was very interested in the narration tape that ran during the cruise. The tape told a story about Vegas Vic, the giant cowboy figure that towers over Fremont Street. They said that when the Fremont canopy was constructed in 1994 that Vegas Vic was too big, so he was taken down, transported to Laughlin, and erected on the Pioneer casino. The tape also stated that a smaller replica was built and put up on Fremont Street. They claimed that the original Vic is in Laughlin, not in Downtown Vegas and that he was renamed, River Rick.

I was stunned by this story. I have been reading about and visiting Vegas for many years, and I have never heard this before.

I was dismayed by the thought that the millions of visitors who look up at Vegas Vic nightly and assume they see the original are really seeing an imposter. Of course, I included this in my article for Vegas Bright. I assumed (apparently wrongly) that the narration tape had its facts straight. After the story was published, I got a comment that said,

“Your article is incorrect about the Pioneer sign in Laughlin being Vegas Vic; Vegas Vic has been in the same spot since 1951. The sign in Laughlin was built and owned by the same people and is a twin built in 1981.”

I thanked them for this insight and began a frenzy of an investigation. I read every Vegas history site I could find, and they all agreed with my commenter. So I wrote to the Neon Museum for their take on this and received this response.

“Hi Bonnie,

I checked with our Collections Manager and another staff researcher and we have never heard of that! It does seem to be a very strange story. As far as we know Vegas Vic was altered to fit under the canopy on Fremont St, but that’s it. To investigate further we compared photos and we think we have the same Vegas Vic sign under the canopy that has always been there: he is still the same scale, his arm hangs down next to his body where River Rick’s sticks out more, and the boots are pretty different. Vic’s also wider. The only real difference in images that’s obvious (besides paint, which changed a few times over his lifetime) is his hat, which we understand was shaved a bit so it could fit under the canopy.

As you can imagine, we come across lots of “legendary” information that gets passed around as fact. We do our best to only provide factual information that we can verify, so that makes us the official kill-joys of stories like the one you brought to our attention.

Based on our comparison of vintage photos to current photos, the visual evidence leads us to say it’s most likely “not true!”

Thanks for your inquiry! “

I also wrote to the Laughlin River Tour company about the situation and they responded that the company is under new ownership, and they are using the same tape that has been used for 17 years, and that was passed onto them. They also said that they appreciated me drawing this situation to their attention and that they were in the process of having the narration corrected.

So hopefully a new narration tape will be created soon that tells only accurate stories. Many thanks to Awhite for commenting and because of you the correct story will now be told.

[Photos: Wikimedia Commons | Cover: Blonde4ever]

Blonde4ever

Bonnie, aka Blonde4ever, is the admin of one of our favorite Vegas forums: LasVegas4ever. She covers a large spectrum of topics from her personal experiences in Las Vegas.