The Fascinating History of Las Vegas
Since the middle of the 20th century, Las Vegas has been known as the capital of the American id. Gambling has long been at the center of its appeal, as nicknames such as “Sin City” and “Lost Wages” suggest. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” is the city’s well-known slogan, while others have remarked, “Las Vegas is where losers come to win, and winners come to lose.”
Rising up from the Nevada desert, the city’s built environment is so extravagant that it’s difficult to imagine a time when its spectacle did not exist, fully formed. Let’s go back and trace the origins of this uniquely American city.
A Desert Oasis
Even though Las Vegas occupies a unique place in American culture, its metropolitan origin was sparked by the same thing that gave rise to many other U.S. cities: the development of the railroad. The area that includes present-day Nevada became a United States territory with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which ended the U.S. war with Mexico. Despite its location in the basin of the Mojave Desert, the site of what is now Las Vegas was a sort of oasis — a valley that included a water source in the form of artesian springs.
The water source was the selling point for railroad magnate and U.S. Senator William Clark. In 1902, he bought 2,000 acres of land and water rights in order to create a waypoint for the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad he incorporated to connect those cities. The railroad line through Nevada began construction in 1904, and the following year, Clark auctioned off parcels of his land, which was located east of the railroad tracks.
Around the same time, civil engineer John T. McWilliams was attempting to build a township west of the railroad tracks. Though he was working with far less acreage than Clark — 80 acres to Clark’s 2,000 — the development provoked competition and intensified Clark’s efforts to build his township. Clark offered refunds on the $16 train fare to town in order to attract buyers. Newspaper advertisements promised, “Get into line early. Buy now, double your money in 60 days,” though accounts differ on which of the two were commissioning that ad.
Ultimately, McWilliams couldn’t really compete. After all, Clark owned the water rights and far more land, and he had a major stake in the railroad. On September 5, 1905, a fire almost completely consumed McWilliams’ townsite, and ensured that the competition between the two was short-lived; development would be concentrated west of the railroad tracks. Clark formed the Las Vegas Land & Water Company with his partners, and vowed, “I will leave no stone unturned and spare myself no personal effort to do all that lies within my power to foster and encourage the growth and development of Las Vegas.”
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Gambling, Divorce, and the Hoover Dam
Clark’s dramatic statement might sound like a natural lead-up to building the bombastic city we know today. But that’s not quite what happened. Over the next 25 years, Las Vegas settled into an existence as a quasi company town, with railroad and mining as the main industries and a population of about 2,300. Clark sold his share of the railroad to Union Pacific in 1921, living in retirement for four more years until his death at age 86.
The 1920s were a tumultuous decade for Las Vegas nearly from the outset. In 1921, Union Pacific cut 60 jobs in the wake of its acquisition of the railroad. President Warren G. Harding’s incoming administration also meant new appointments to the Railroad Labor Board, and the board approved a series of wage cuts for railroad workers. In the meantime, a post-World War I downturn in mining further impacted Las Vegas. Then, in what is largely viewed as a retaliatory move, Union Pacific moved its repair shops out of Las Vegas and to Caliente, Nevada, costing hundreds of jobs.
With a dire economic outlook impacting the entire state, Nevada revisited the legalization of gambling, which had been legal from its statehood in 1869 up until 1910. With greater public support for relegalizing gambling than previous efforts had, a bill to legalize “wide open” gambling passed in both the state Assembly and Senate, and on March 19, 1931, Governor Fred Balzar signed it into law. That same year, divorce laws were loosened to permit anyone with a six-week residency in the state to legally divorce. And just one year earlier, construction had begun on the Hoover Dam, bringing an influx of thousands of workers to the area, many of whom would take the short trip to Las Vegas to try their luck with the newly legalized games. With this confluence of events, the Las Vegas we know today began to take shape.
Organized Crime and the Strip
The decriminalization of gambling made Las Vegas an attractive destination to experienced gambling operators, some of whom were running criminal enterprises in other states. One such figure was the archetypal crooked cop Guy McAfee, a Los Angeles vice squad officer who fled to Las Vegas to escape prosecution for running gambling and prostitution rings — the exact vice he was supposed to be policing. Arriving in town in 1938, he bought the Pair-O-Dice Club on Highway 91 and renamed it the 91 Club, delaying its grand opening to 1939 in order to coincide with Ria Langham's six-week residency for divorcing Clark Gable.
McAfee was responsible for two enduring pieces of Las Vegas culture: He opened the Golden Nugget on Fremont Street, ushering in an era of grandiose casinos, and he is also credited with nicknaming Highway 91 “the Strip.” The Golden Nugget opened in 1946, about a year after the Nevada Legislature created the first casino license stipulating a 1% tax rate on gross gaming revenue in excess of $3,000.
The lucrative gaming industry began to attract heavier organized crime players beyond McAfee. Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel arrived in Las Vegas intending to create a base of operations for the notorious Syndicate, which, at the time, was led by Meyer Lansky during a period when Salvatore “Lucky” Luciano was in prison. Using funds from the Syndicate, Siegel became the primary stakeholder in the construction of a casino on Highway 91 to rival the Golden Nugget. Siegel wanted it to depart from the Old West aesthetic of most casinos of the time, and instead be patterned after the tropical resorts the Syndicate backed in Havana, Cuba. He dubbed it the Flamingo, and hoped to set a new standard for opulence in line with Siegel’s own worldview. “Class, that’s the only thing that counts in life," he once said. “Without class and style, a man’s a bum, he might as well be dead.”
Lavish attention to detail and poor business management contributed to enormous cost overruns, and bad luck compromised the Flamingo’s opening and its ability to quickly recoup costs. Maybe because of the money, maybe for a number of other possible motives that are debated to this day, Bugsy Siegel was gunned down while reading the newspaper in a Beverly Hills mansion on June 21, 1947. The murder was a national sensation, covered in tabloids and TIME magazine alike. LIFE magazine ran a gruesomely iconic full-page photo of the crime scene in its article about the murder. The case, Crime Case #46176 in the Beverly Hills Police Department, is still open and unsolved.
In a tellingly quick matter of minutes after Siegel’s murder, other Syndicate bosses took over the Flamingo. The resort eventually became profitable — so much so that the Syndicate began building more casino-resorts on the Strip. Organized crime had taken hold in Las Vegas, and the era of the swanky, entertainment-oriented hotel-casino was born. The mob invested in more casinos; the Sands Hotel and Casino opened in 1952 and brought in the “Rat Pack” (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford) for a high-profile residency. The Dunes, Riviera, and New Frontier opened in 1955; the Tropicana followed in 1957, and the Stardust opened a year later. Each had ties with organized crime syndicates from around the country.
The Fall of the Mob
Despite the sensational murder of Bugsy Siegel, the mob’s involvement in casinos, hotels, restaurants, and other Vegas businesses expanded, and more gangsters arrived in the city throughout the 1960s and ’70s. But in the late ’60s, billionaire Howard Hughes bought a series of mob-connected casinos — the Desert Inn, the Sands, Castaways, Frontier, the Silver Slipper, and Landmark — that shifted the balance of casino ownership in the city from mob-connected to corporate-owned. In 1969, the Nevada Legislature promoted corporate ownership of casinos, and in 1970, Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (commonly known as RICO), which aided the U.S. Justice Department in cracking down on organized crime.
During the ’70s, high-profile car and restaurant bombings between rival gangs unsettled the city to the point of attracting the attention of the FBI. The Nevada Gaming Commission and the Nevada Gaming Control Board refocused on organized crime, and Governor Mike O’Callaghan made it a point of emphasis. A RICO case focused on mobster Anthony Spilotro and Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, whose connections ran from Chicago mob families to others throughout the Midwest. By 1981, Spilotro’s operations had been broken up, and the mob was all but finished in Las Vegas.
The Rise of the Corporate Mega-Resort
Billionaire businessman Kirk Kerkorian bought the Flamingo in 1967, and in 1969, he opened the massive International Hotel. It was the largest hotel in the country, with 1,500 rooms and a 4,200-seat showroom. For its grand opening, he brought in Barbra Streisand, and then followed that by bringing in Elvis Presley for a famed residency — 837 consecutive sold-out performances over seven years — that set an enduring record. The same year, Kerkorian bought Hollywood’s venerable MGM Studio, and set out to build a themed resort in Las Vegas based on the production house.
With all of the buying and building, Kerkorian incurred enormous costs, so to help balance the ledger, he sold the Flamingo (and later the International Hotel as well) to the Hilton Hotel Corporation. The success of the Flamingo Hilton caught the attention of other major hotel corporations, such as Sheraton and Holiday Inn, and they too began opening casino-hotels in the city. In 1973, Kerkorian opened the MGM Hotel-Casino, which eclipsed the International Hotel in grandeur, boasting 2,100 rooms, eight restaurants, two showrooms, and the (at the time) world’s largest casino. It was the largest resort in the world, and Las Vegas’ first mega-resort.
During the rest of the ’70s and into the ’80s, development on the Strip stagnated. But Las Vegas itself was growing: From 1985 to 1995, the city’s population nearly doubled, increasing to around 368,360. Using junk bonds in 1989, developer Steve Wynn reinvigorated the Strip by building the most ostentatious mega-resort yet: the Mirage Resort and Casino. A 29-story Y-shaped tower with 3,044 rooms, a 1,500-seat showroom, and waterfalls, it also had a simulated volcano that would “erupt” every 15 minutes after sundown. That same year, Kerkorian announced plans for a new MGM Grand, which was completed in 1991 and took the mantle as Las Vegas’ largest casino, with even more over-the-top touches including a lion zoo and heavyweight boxing arena.
An Entertainment Capital
The 1990s were a transitional era in Vegas, as many of the midcentury casino icons were razed in favor of constructing new family-friendly mega-resorts, representing a commitment toward broader entertainment tourism, rather than singular gambling. The Sands was imploded and replaced by the Venetian; similarly, the Dunes was replaced by the Bellagio, and the Hacienda was replaced by Mandalay Bay Resort. In true Las Vegas fashion, each implosion was a spectator event. The Hacienda implosion was even scheduled at 9 p.m. on December 31, 1996, in order to coincide with the new year on the East Coast. Most of the casino implosions were televised, and the videos can still be viewed on local TV news channel websites.
Today, Las Vegas continues to broaden its scope. Professional sports leagues have ended their historical aversion to placing teams in the city, as seen by the NHL awarding the expansion team the Las Vegas Golden Knights in 2017, the WNBA’s San Antonio Stars relocating to Las Vegas and becoming the Aces in 2018, and the NFL’s iconic franchise the Raiders relocating to Las Vegas in 2020. Major League Baseball’s Athletics are likely to follow. Las Vegas is now known as a city with an excellent fine-dining scene, with a number of chefs up as semifinalists for 2024 James Beard Awards. And the only place in town the mob exists now is in a museum.
