Last Chance Joe

Last Chance Joe began as a drawing used in advertising for an Idaho café and grew into a giant prospector above a Nevada casino. The Sparks Heritage Museum says Roscoe E. "Duke" Reading of Boise designed the prospector in 1952 for restaurateur Dick Graves, who used it to promote his Last Chance Café in Garden City, Idaho. When Idaho outlawed gambling in 1953, Graves moved to Nevada and took Joe with him. The Rempel company even made squeeze-toy versions that, the museum says, sold in the thousands nationwide.

The giant version came later. The museum's history says a 35-foot figure was announced in September 1957 for the new Nugget building in Sparks, and that R. L. Grosh & Sons Scenic Studio in Hollywood built it around a steel frame, with chicken wire, papier-mâché and a Celastic fabric skin. It travelled north in three sections on a railcar, routed through Oregon to clear the tunnels, and was reassembled by Reno Iron Works. The museum gives its height as 32 feet; a 1969 Reno Evening Gazette item, quoted by the museum, called it 36, and MyNews4 used that figure in 2018.