Sylvie Vartan and Dom Deluise headline the MGM. Over at The Sands, it’s The Association and The Limelighters. In between, a lonely Shell station stands watch over a lightly trafficked Strip. It’s 1979, and you can take in the whole thing, from the Sahara and El Rancho in the north to the Marina and Tropicana in the south.
In the foreground, the fountains of Caesars Palace, from whose Fantasy Tower Robert Paluzzi shot this panoramic view of Carter-era Las Vegas.
Paluzzi was by day the national director of sales at Caesars and helped turn Las Vegas into a prime destination for conventions. In his downtime, he was a self-described amateur photographer with a penchant for panoramas of the city, the Southwest, and well beyond.
Now the collection of the former executive, who died in 2006 at the age of 86, resides in UNLV Libraries Special Collections and Archives, fully…