Oral history interview with Helen E. La Plant conducted by Claytee D. White on October 08, 2003 for the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project. La Plant begins by discussing her early life in Minneapolis, Minnesota during the 1920s and 1930s and joining the United States Army at the age of twenty-one. La Plant then describes serving in Okinawa, Japan after World War II as a photographer for the Signal Corps. La Plant describes her return from Japan and decision to attend photography school in New York City, New York. La Plant then chronicles her experiences moving to Las Vegas, Nevada in the late 1950s to work at the Nevada Test Site as a photographer. She then recounts the shift from aboveground atomic testing to underground testing and her role as head of the photography department at the Nevada Test Site. Lastly, La Plant talks about entertainment during the 1960s in Las Vegas.
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Soldier and explorer Joseph Christmas Ives graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1852. In 1855, he married Cora Semmes Ives. From 1857 to 1858, Ives commanded an expedition to explore up the Colorado River to the lower end of the Grand Canyon. He then crossed the desert to Fort Defiance in Colorado. The Ives expedition produced one of the important early maps of the Grand Canyon. Ives served in the American Civil War for the Confederate Army and was promoted to aide-de-camp, with the rank of colonel.
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The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is a comprehensive program dedicated to documenting, preserving and disseminating the remembered past of persons affiliated with and affected by the Nevada Test Site during the era of Cold War nuclear testing.
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