In a storied journalism history that includes Mark Twain and Dan De Quille, national figures such as Hank Greenspun, and renowned newspapers like Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise, the Valley Times has a place among Nevada's most controversial and important newspapers.

The publication began as a weekly, the North Las Vegas and Moapa Valley Times, on March 26, 1959. Founder Adam Yacenda had been the Las Vegas Sun's managing editor for most of the 1950s, and before that, a southern California editor and publisher who had worked on Richard Nixon's U.S. Senate campaign in 1950. He believed that North Las Vegas was growing fast enough to support its own newspaper, as did Greenspun, with whom Yacenda feuded over politics as well as which of them really owned and founded the paper.

Yacenda won the latter battle, eventually expanded to a tri-weekly publication, and became a force in North Las Vegas politics. Health problems forced him to sell the Times in November 1973 to Robert L. Brown, a veteran reporter, editor, and Las Vegas political and advertising consultant. Brown started publishing weekdays, then added a Sunday issue, making Las Vegas the only city other than New York with a population of more than 100,000 and three competing daily newspapers.

Brown assembled a superb staff, led by longtime Las Vegas journalist A.D. Hopkins, and then by Bruce Hasley, his managing editor for nearly a decade. He engaged in nasty editorial exchanges with Greenspun, who correctly saw that Brown was taking aim at him. The Times emphasized gaming as being not just an important advertiser, but a key political and business factor in Las Vegas. Brown hired reporters and columnists to cover the industry regularly. His top reporter and columnist, Ned Day, had unparalleled sources in law enforcement and organized crime. Day uncovered mob influence at the Argent-owned Stardust, Fremont, and Hacienda resorts, which were actually run by organized crime figure Frank Rosenthal on behalf of the Chicago, Kansas City, and Milwaukee organized crime families. Day also reported on the Tropicana, dominated by Kansas City mobsters, and the Aladdin, owned by a Detroit and St. Louis group.

The Times was connected, too, in an advertising scheme that enabled the Stardust's operators to skim profits from their casino. Sinking into debt as he tried to compete with the other two papers, Brown filed for bankruptcy. He stopped submitting payroll taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, which seized his building and presses in July 1982. Brown eventually won them back in court, but the paper was losing too much money to survive.

Brown died on June 8, 1984. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court-appointed trustee Berkeley Bunker ordered the paper closed. The Valley Times published its last issue on June 22, 1984. Its staff went on to play influential roles in Las Vegas journalism, gaming, advertising, and politics. Many longtime Las Vegans and reporters still cite the heyday of the Valley Times in the late 1970s as a golden age of Las Vegas journalism.