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Las Vegas was a small railroad town when Nevada formally established it in 1905. Five years after its founding, the U.S. census recorded only 800 residents. Yet by the 1950s, it was known as a gambling tourist haven, where visitors could see a show with celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. in between trips to the baccarat tables.
Although Nevada’s legalization of gambling in 1931 opened the doors for this transformation, that alone doesn’t tell the whole story of how Las Vegas became the gambling mecca over its one-time rival, Reno. The story also includes an influx of workers to federal projects in Nevada, a crackdown on illegal gambling in Los Angeles and the mob’s migration to Vegas.
Former Vice Cop Helped Build Gambling (Tax) Haven
View of Fremont Street in Las Vegas, Nevada, with a car racing down, c. 1928
Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Nevada’s legalization of gambling in 1931 coincided with the beginning of construction on the Hoover Dam, which brought thousands of workers to Boulder City. On pay day, these workers would travel the roughly 25 miles to Las Vegas to enjoy gambling on Fremont Street, which was the downtown hub of Vegas before the Strip.
“One of the sayings was that the town got very exciting for a couple of days a month,” says Michael Green, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. During World War II, the opening of a magnesium plant in nearby Henderson, Nevada also brought in a large population of workers looking for weekend recreation.
Still, an influx of gamblers every two weeks wasn’t enough to make Las Vegas a gambling mecca. For that, it needed people with experience running gambling businesses. Starting in 1938, these people began to move to Las Vegas as a new mayor in Los Angeles cracked down on illegal gambling. One of the most influential was Guy McAfee, an LA cop on the vice squad who fled California to escape prosecution for running gambling and prostitution rings on the side.
Another big turning point came in 1941, when the first combined hotel-casino, El Rancho Vegas, opened on a stretch of Highway 91 that McAfee later nicknamed “the Strip.” The El Rancho Vegas resort was important because it helped make gambling “something you could do on a vacation,” says David G. Schwartz, a gaming historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “And that was very successful.”
The resort’s success led others to open hotel-casinos. Some sprouted up on Fremont Street, nicknamed “Glitter Gulch” by the Chamber of Commerce in 1946, the same year McAfee opened the Golden Nugget there. Others were built on the Strip, an area outside of city limits where McAfee and other resort owners established the unincorporated township of Paradise, Nevada as a tax shelter.
Mobsters Grew Business With Big Nightclub Acts
General view of Downtown Las Vegas from Fremont Street looking at the Golden Nugget Gambling Hall, The Mint, Pioneer Club, Lucky Strike,…
Read Full Story At: History.
