The Early History of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Strip

Chapter 1: Las Vegas Overview

1.1: Early history of the city
1.2: How things have changed!
1.3: Weather in the desert.
1.4: The best time to go
1.5: Geography of Las Vegas
1.6: Leave the kids at home

1.1 Early history of the city

Las Vegas is generally recognized to have begun in 1905 when the Union Pacific Railroad began passing through a desert oasis ...an ideal refueling point and rest stop. Las Vegas is Spanish for "The Meadows" ...a name it got due to the availability of spring-fed water. In 2005 - 100 years later - Vegas is commemorating and celebrating its centennial. Las Vegas loves to party!

It was incorporated as a city in 1911. Eager for employment during the Great Depression of the 1930's, thousands of workers began pouring into the area when Boulder Dam (later renamed Hoover Dam) was being built on the Colorado River.

Nevada was the first state to legalize casino-style gambling. It got its start in 1931 when Clark County (Nevada) issued a three month gaming license to a downtown Las Vegas club. A three mile dusty desert road nicknamed the "Strip" sprang up south of downtown.

A little known fact is that the famous Las Vegas Strip is really not located in the Las Vegas city limits and actually comes under the jurisdiction of Clark County. One of the earliest strip resorts was the Flamingo Hotel, built by gangsters Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and Meyer Lansky. Built with mob money, the Flamingo opened on New Year's Eve 1946.

In the early days, there was no state speed limit, no sales tax, no waiting period for marriages, no state income tax and gambling was totally unregulated. Gamblers used silver dollars, later to be replaced with silver-dollar-size plastic chips.

By the early 1950's Las Vegas had become a true vacation destination ...the era of Elvis, the Rat Pack and Liberace. (It also was the quickie divorce and marriage capital of the U.S.)

There were about 1,800 hotel rooms on the Strip. The best hotels charged $7.50 a day back then, a motel, $3.00.

Times have changed. Year-round rates now range between $50.00 and $300.00 a night ...sometimes more, sometimes less. The average is around $100 a day (center strip) for what is nearly 150,000 total Las Vegas hotel rooms. But one thing has not changed. The average stay in Las Vegas is still 3 or 4 days. Most visitors usually stay for the weekend ...and to a lessor extent: Sunday through Thursday (which is a better value.)

Multiple coin slot machines arrived in the 1960's. Mechanical penny and nickel slot machines evolved into computerized dollar slot machines. Today you can find machines that accept $500 chips. Payouts grew from a few hundred dollars to today's several million dollar progressive jackpots.

The oldest resort hotels (about fifty years old) still operating under their original name include the Frontier, Flamingo, Riviera, Tropicana and the Stardust. In 1957, Minsky’s Follies at the Dunes Resort became the first to debut topless showgirls on the Las Vegas strip.

In 1960, the Stardust became the first hotel to present a production show spectacular. It imported the Lido de Paris from France. The Tropicana Hotel bought the American rights to the spectacular Folies Bergere in1959 and the show continues to this day; the longest running show in Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas Convention Center opened in 1959. The objective was to fill empty hotel rooms with conventioneers during the slack tourist months. It now contains 1.5-million-square-feet of exhibit space, one of the largest in the world. More than 5.5 million convention delegates meet in Las Vegas every year.

Caesar’s Palace opened in 1966 ...followed by several hotel-casinos developed in the 1970's, 80's and 90's. Some of the older hotels (Caesar’s being an exception), have not kept pace with the quality offered by the newer resorts. So we will be featuring the newer, better hotels on our trip. We will tell you what to do, where to go ...and how to save money.

The Las Vegas strip is always in a state of turmoil ...always building, expanding and remodeling. We manage to see something new every time we go. For one thing, the "family" vacation theme is now ancient history. Las Vegas is now catering to adults and conventioneers who have money to gamble. Sin City has arrived.

Several older hotels were imploded in the late 1990's to make room for new mega-resorts catering to the big spender. The Dunes became the Bellagio; the Sands became the Venetian, the Hacienda became the Mandalay Bay and the Desert Inn became the new Wynn Las Vegas mega-resort. These "new direction resorts" are (in my opinion) the best of what Las Vegas has to offer in the way of lodging and amenities.

Wynn Las Vegas Hotel-Casino

Their cost is not beyond the reach of the average vacationer if you know the "system" of how Las Vegas keeps its 130,000-plus rooms constantly occupied. The Vegas World (itself a legend in Las Vegas history) became the Stratosphere in 1996, but it is far from being in the same quality class and its location (on the far North end of the strip) is poor.

Steve Wynn

Visionary Steve Wynn is credited with building some of the best las vegas hotels ...each successive one being better (more lavish) than the last. He has now sold his (downtown) Golden Nugget, Treasure Island, Mirage and Bellagio hotel-casinos.

His new 50-story, $2.7 billion project -- built on the old Desert Inn property -- is called "Wynn Las Vegas." It is perhaps the most luxurious resort-hotel in Las Vegas.

Wynn opened the 50-story 2,800 room resort on his wife's birthday: April 28, 2005. A $100 million domed "stage-in-the-round" showroom features a new Cirque du Soleil show called "Le Reve.". More on this later.