Las Vegas History

Earliest Times

Native Americans have used the Southern Nevada territory for hunting and agriculture for thousands of years. An Anasazi "Lost City" can be found near Overton, Nevada, northwest of Las Vegas. The Paiute people populated the Las Vegas area at the time of Cortez. In 1829 a party of explorers coming up from Mexico entered the valley, looking for water. (They were just the first of millions of tourists to come.) Because the place had abundant water from many artesian wells, the valley was covered with luxurious grasslands. Thus, the explorers called the place "The Meadows" or "Las Vegas" in Spanish. According to tradition, this place is at the Spring Preserve, west of Las Vegas.

A few years later, in 1844, John C. Frémont arrived and made a journal of his findings. (Las Vegas was still part of Mexico at this time.) Frémont's writings became popular and led to more migration westward into the area. By 1864, Nevada was advanced enough to become the 36th state of the Union, beating its neighbors (other than California) by several years.

Mining and Railroads

For a long time at the end of the 19th century Las Vegas was both a mining camp and a railroad town. Minerals of different kinds were found in the region, and the railroad came, linking Southern California to Salt Lake City. Las Vegas' continuing ample supply of water was important to the maintenance and refueling of the railroads. At the same time, the State Land Act of 1885 caused many settlers to stake out agricultural land claims (similar to homestead claims) throughout the valley. Well into the 20th century, agriculture sustained the local economy.

Start of the Town

The Town of Las Vegas was founded on May 15, 1905 when a land auction of 110 acres in the center of the village was held. This land is bounded by Main Street on the west, 5th Street (which became Las Vegas Boulevard) on the east, and by Stewart Avenue on the north and Garces Avenue to the south. The population of Las Vegas in 1911, when it be-came an incorporated town, was 800.Clark County was created in 1909 with a population of 3,321.

Gambling, which had always been such a "normal" activity that no one even considered whether it might be illegal, was actually prohibited in 1909. Around the same time, how-ever, the legislature loosened the residency requirements for a divorce, and a new source of tourist income was born. A candidate for a "quickie divorce" could quickly establish "resi-dence" at a "dude ranch." These places were seen by many as the primitive prototypes for Strip resorts in later years.

Hoover Dam and the Return of Gambling

In 1931, construction began on the Hoover Dam, bringing in many workers, and a boost to the depression-plagued economy. In the same year, and maybe because of the influx of workers for the dam, the 1909 ban on gambling was lifted. Downtown Las Vegas began to sprout casinos. The Nevada Hotel, which had been around since before the land auction that started the town, changed its name to "Sal Sagev" (Las Vegas spelled backwards) and opened a casino. (It is now the site of the Golden Gate Hotel downtown.) Illegal gambling had been going on since the 1909 ban had taken effect, but it was on a small scale. It sur-vived in combination with the speakeasy culture, to circumvent prohibition. Now, gambling began in earnest.

In 1935, the Hoover dam was completed. Las Vegas had a population of 8,422.

World War II Years

During World War II Nellis Air Force Base was established nearby to the northeast. The town of Henderson to the southeast also was put on the map as the home base for industrial suppliers linked to the defense industry. The U.S. Army used its influence to have Las Ve-gas outlaw prostitution, ending Block 16, the red light district.

In 1941, Thomas Hull opened the El Rancho Vegas on the corner of Sahara and State Route 91, which later came to be called "The Strip." This was the first hotel resort. It initiated the all-you-can-eat buffet, a Las Vegas standard. Soon afterward, the Hotel Last Frontier went up on the site of the 1931-vintage Pair-O-Dice nightclub, and became the second on the Strip.

The Post-War Origins of Modern Las Vegas

Post War Vegas saw the development of more clubs and hotels downtown, as well as a true boom farther south of town. In a move that has become the subject of books and movies, Bugsy Siegel, a known underworld figure, together with his gangland colleague, mob boss Meyer Lansky (and others, like Lucky Luciano), built The Flamingo in 1946. The Flamingo did not do well at the beginning, and Bugsy Siegel was fired in typical mobster fashion (with extreme prejudice) in Beverly Hills. Undaunted, other developers came and opened their doors at the Sahara, the Sands, the New Frontier (where at first, the Last Frontier had stood), Royal Nevada, Showboat, The Riviera, and the Tropicana. By 1954, Las Vegas was welcoming over 8 million visitors per year. Entertainment became part of the draw of Las Vegas, as performers like Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Abbott and Costello and Bing Crosby performed in small clubs.

The Strip is actually in Clark County, mostly. During the early years, the City of Las Vegas had looked longingly at the tax revenues generated by the properties on the Strip on the Clark County side. It is believed that organized crime pressured the Clark County Commis-sion to create the unincorporated township of Paradise City, where the Strip is. This pre-vented the City of Las Vegas from being legally able to annex the territory.

A curious detail is that the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission detonated over a hundred at-mospheric nuclear explosions in Nevada, nearby Las Vegas, starting in 1951. Rather than scare people away, this became something of a tourist attraction itself, as the mushroom clouds were visible from the resorts.

The first racially integrated hotel, Moulin Rouge, opened in 1951 downtown.

The Desert Inn, established by 1950, introduced topless showgirls in a famous show pro-duced by Harold Minsky called "The Follies," opening in 1955. Minsky's Follies carried the late 19th century Parisian nightclub tradition into the twentieth century, and it continues in Las Vegas to the present day.

Wayne Newton's first gig in Las Vegas was at the Fremont Hotel, downtown, in 1956.

Cleaning Up and Growing

An event critical to the ultimate success of Las Vegas was the creation in 1959 of the Las Vegas Gaming Commission. This legislative move was in response to congressional con-cerns, expressed in rather notorious, televised hearings, that organized crime figures had a corrupting influence on all aspects of the gaming industry in Las Vegas. By screening pro-posed casino owners and issuing (and suspending or revoking) gaming licenses, the public was to be reassured of the security and honesty of the gaming industry in Nevada.

In 1959, pioneer commercial designer Betty Willis created the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign in lights and neon, which instantly became a trademark and logo for Las Vegas as a whole. The sign still stands at the south end of the Strip.

By the time Jack Kennedy was sworn in as President in 1961, Las Vegas had grown to the point that it accounted for 25% of the population of Nevada, occupying far less than 1% of Nevada's territory. In response to the creation of the Nevada Gaming Commission, several corporations began building large resort properties on the Strip and renovating or building casinos Downtown. The term "gaming" as a respectable substitute for "gambling" was in-vented and began to dominate the local lexicon.

The Decade of the Sixties

The decade saw the return of Elvis Presley to Las Vegas, who opened at the International Hotel (now the Las Vegas Hilton). In the early 1960's the "Rat Pack" became a major draw to Las Vegas and an entertainment phenomenon. (The "Rat Pack" usually refers to a cabal of entertainers led by Frank Sinatra and including Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Dean Martin. [See Link].)

In the late 1960's, Howard Hughes moved into the top floors of the Desert Inn and began buying or building many hotel properties along the Strip. He is credited in having a hand in finally ridding the town of organized crime money and encouraging "legitimate" invest-ment in the entertainment industry created and defined in Las Vegas. ([See Link]) Hughes must share honors with Kirk Kerkorian, an immensely wealthy and talented Los Angeles-based developer, who bought the troubled Flamingo in 1968 and went on to build the Inter-national in 1969 and the original MGM Grand in 1973.

In the 1960's, Liberace came to Vegas and began a second career after his enormously popular television show in the 1950's.

More Expansion and Growth

In the 1970's and 1980's, Las Vegas grew like a teenager, fast enough to double its popula-tion in less than a decade. Building continued unimpeded on the Strip.

In November, 1980 the MGM Grand caught fire, killing 87 people and injuring 785. This marked the first major disaster in Las Vegas, and is still the largest tragedy in the history of the state. The property was sold and became Bally's. The new MGM Grand opened in 1993 on the site of the old Marina Hotel.

In the 1990's, responding to the aging demographic of baby boomers, Las Vegas tried to create a family-friendly image. The space on the Strip was nearly all taken, and buildings started to come down to make room for other, newer and bigger ones. In 1993 the Dunes came down in the first of many spectacular implosions. In 1995 the Landmark bit the dust, followed by the Hacienda, the old Aladdin in 1998, El Rancho, Boardwalk, Desert Inn and Glass Pool in the early years of this millennium, and then the famous Stardust (2007).

The era of the mega-resort began in 1988 with the creation of the Mirage, followed by many other enormous hotels - some of them the biggest in the world, until a competing developer built a larger one nearby. Steve Wynn built the 3,044-room luxury Mirage Hotel and Resort with $630 million in junk bonds, sold through Wall Street. Many others followed, as tourism surged and the Strip attracted more and more gamblers and show-goers. In 1990, Rio and Excalibur opened their doors. The MGM Grand was to follow three years later, and in the same year (1993) pirate-themed Treasure Island opened, and the Egypt-themed Luxor. In 1996 the needle-like Stratosphere Tower was completed, and Monte Carlo also opened for business. The following year saw New York-New York welcome its first visitors; the luxurious Bellagio followed in 1998. Then, as if the bubble would never burst, in 1999 the Strip welcomed mega-resorts Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, and Paris. The new Aladdin (2000) had a 1001 Arabian Nights Theme. It was built on the site of the old Aladdin Hotel, started in 1966, where Elvis and Priscilla Presley were married. As one of the last to arrive in the wave of mega-resorts, the new mega-resort version of the Aladdin was one of the first to go. It closed in 2003 and reopened as Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino (a Caesars Entertainment property) in 2007.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Las Vegas saw a decline in the number of new mega-resorts, but an increase in scale and ambition. The Palms opened in 2001 with two towers, one forty stories and the other fifty-five. The Wynn Las Vegas opened its doors in 2005, at a cost of $2.7 billion. It is complete with an 18-hole championship golf course and over 2,700 rooms on 45 floors. In 2007 the Palazzo came along, with the tallest tower, so far, in Las Vegas, over 3,000 rooms, and more floor space than the Pentagon. A year later, Encore opened. It was something of a sequel to the Wynn, and located on the same property. It is a bit younger, less formal and more “with it” than the more staid Wynn Las Vegas. It offers over 2,000 rooms.

In 2009, The CityCenter opened, a construction project of grander scale than any others in the history of Las Vegas. It is the largest privately-funded construction in U.S. History. The cluster of seven buildings is on the strip next to Monte Carlo and Bellagio. (All three are properties of MGM Resorts International.) The complex offers around 2,500 condos and nearly 5,000 hotel rooms.

The timing of the CityCenter was not perfect. By 2009, the financial crisis had begun. Wall Street investment banks started to fail, and were bailed out by politicians and bureaucrats. Then home mortgages went into foreclosure, and the nation’s entire real estate market sank to nearly nothing. Though businesses were generally liquid, they did not expand. Instead of hiring, they laid people off, retrenching for a serious recession. Unemployment rose to the highest post-depression levels and remained there. It turned out to be the worst economic downturn since Wall Street last brought the economy to a halt in 1929.

The Economic Crisis

Las Vegas was hit harder than just about any other place in the nation. The home foreclosure rate was the nation’s highest for any city. The unemployment rate vied for first place with the former industrial cities of the “rust belt.” Tourists only trickled in to gamble. They could not afford the great “mega-resorts” built for them in the previous 20 years. Everybody discounted their rates heavily, and most companies tied to the tourist economy lost money. Construction came to a virtual standstill.

The Cosmopolitan (operated as part of the Marriott group) was able to finish its massive, nearly $4 billion project in 2010, south of the Bellagio. This was the only ribbon-cutting in Las Vegas for the year. The original plan was to sell space for 2,200 condos, 800 hotel rooms, shopping and, of course, a mega-casino and entertainment complex. The project was sued by Hearst Enterprises for infringement of the name “Cosmopolitan,” and the hotel became embroiled in a controversy over a trans-gender guest who was ejected and threatened by the staff. This led to a boycott from the LGBT community. Condo owners sued management, and competitors tried to commandeer the project at several points. It would be the last “mega-resort” for a while.

Meanwhile, Las Vegas became the worst place to look for a job, according to Forbes magazine (November, 2011). It had the nation’s highest metropolitan unemployment rate and the nation’s highest home foreclosure rate.

Urban Renewal and Prospects for Recovery

Even while the national economy slammed Las Vegas with unemployment, foreclosures and a massive drop in tourism, the City Fathers had been working on a rejuvenation of the downtown area, to make it more competitive to the Strip in the quest for tourist dollars. In 1995 the first phase of “The Freemont Street Experience” was completed, including a massive showplace plaza for the public, with shows of music and lights, set in a long shopping mall and promenade where tourists could find world-class boutiques, dining and drinks. Nearby, Neonopolis sprang to life, also with shopping, drinking, dining and entertainment, as well as a museum of Las Vegas’s traditional neon signage.

In 2005, Las Vegas celebrated its centennial all year long, with fun, parties and special events. The Las Vegas Spring Reserve, known as the “birthplace of Las Vegas,” opened to the public on a 180-acre historical site. In 2007, the City opened a phase two of the urban renewal with the “Freemont East Entertainment District.” The idea was to provide a downtown venue for non-gambling nightclubs, show venues and lounges. Finally, in 2009, the city broke ground on the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, inside the 61-acre Symphony Park, to provide an upgrade to the predominantly gaming-oriented culture of Las Vegas’s first 100 years.

Issues facing the local government continue to be diversification away from gaming-based tourism and the resolution of the critical water shortage in the region, even as everyone waits for the slow economic recovery to bring back the clientele that made the city so exciting between 1989 and 2009. The city continues to be a favorite location for meetings and conventions, and special events (like the Latin Grammy Awards) still consider their home base to be Las Vegas.