Larry Gregg digs beneath the shiny surface of America's ‘sin city’ to find out how this extravagant home of gambling and glamour came to be.
A Tribute to Moe Green
In the 1974 blockbuster The Godfather 2, a character named Hyman Roth, modelled on criminal mastermind Meyer Lansky, pays tribute to a departed friend:
… he had an idea to build a town on a desert staging area for American soldiers on their way to the West Coast. This guy's name was Moe Green - and the city he came up with was Las Vegas. He was a great man - a man of vision and courage. And this city doesn't even have a plaque - or a signpost - or a statue with his name on it!
The Role of Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel
Green is a reference to Lansky's associate Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel of the infamous New York and Brooklyn-based crime syndicate known as Murder Incorporated. Seventeen years after The Godfather II premiered, Warren Beatty directed the award-winning film Bugsy, which also features Siegel as the visionary responsible for the famous Las Vegas Strip. In the final frames of the film, the viewer is shown a panoramic shot of the Strip glowing at night with the words:
By 1991, the six million dollars invested in Bugsy's dream of Las Vegas had generated $100 billion in revenue.
These two films reflect what many people think of a city that now attracts nearly 40 million tourists a year. The myth about Siegel is that he founded the Las Vegas Strip and created the modern casino resort by opening his Flamingo Casino in December 1946, and that these two projects transformed a little-known desert city into a world-renowned sophisticated center of gambling and glamour. If you're interested in experiencing some of that glamour today, you can try out online casinos and even get a wanted win no deposit bonus, giving you a chance to test your luck without any financial risk.
Las Vegas Before the Flamingo
Contrary to this view, however, by the time Siegel opened the Flamingo, Las Vegas was already a thriving tourist town with two successful casino resorts on the outskirts of the city along the Los Angeles motorway known as the Strip.
The Early Days of Las Vegas
Established in 1905 by the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad as a dividing point for the railway line, Las Vegas is located in southern Nevada, a state dominated by mountain ranges and desert. About halfway between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Los Angeles, California, Las Vegas proved to be a good place to build repair shops and house mechanics as well as train crews. However, it grew slowly.
In 1910, only 947 people lived there; a decade later, just over 2,300. Local mines failed to provide the region with a reliable income, although the dramatically increased demand for copper, silver, and tungsten during World War I caused a temporary boom.
The Boulder Dam and Economic Boost
The Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1911, vigorously promoted the area's agricultural prospects because of its many artesian wells, and also sought to make Las Vegas a center of tourism on the scenic southwestern United States, but all to little success. When Las Vegas workers joined a nationwide railway strike in 1922, the Union Pacific, which had purchased the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City Railway the year before, punished them by closing repair shops. The loss of 300 jobs devastated the small community.
Until Calvin Coolidge's administration decided in late 1928 to build a dam nearby on the Colorado River, Las Vegas faced an uncertain future. The federal government spent $19 million to build the dam and the nearby city of Boulder City to house construction crews. By 1934, the construction of the Boulder Dam employed more than 5,000 workers who earned a total of $750,000 a month, much of it spent in Las Vegas, which was only thirty miles away. Several later recalled with warmth their trips to Las Vegas twice a month for their paychecks.
The Impact of Prohibition and Gambling in Las Vegas
Secretary of the Interior Raymond Wilbur, while rejecting the community as a place to house Boulder Dam construction workers, was less favorable in his characterization of Las Vegas, which he considered a ‘noisy frontier town.’ Much of the nation's press agreed, and for good reason. Local law enforcement officials showed little interest in enforcing the national experiment ‘to prohibit the manufacture and distribution of alcoholic beverages.’ Their negligence reflected the attitude of the majority of the state's citizens, who held a referendum to petition Congress to repeal the 1919 constitutional amendment establishing Prohibition.
In this atmosphere, several illegal bars in Las Vegas, supplied by dozens of bootleggers, operated openly. Their only concern was the occasional raid by federal agents. In May 1931, for example, nearly sixty agents arrived in Las Vegas, arresting dozens of people. If reporters are to be believed, the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 led to even more excesses. Two years later, one reporter claimed that ‘every second or third man’ he met on the street ‘had three drinks more than the norm.’
The Rapid Growth of Gambling
As Las Vegas grew into a hub of entertainment and nightlife, its reputation for gambling only expanded. Today, the city remains a symbol of excitement and risk, much like the world of online casinos, where players seek out opportunities such as the Wanted Win no deposit bonus to try their luck without initial investment. The spirit of Las Vegas’ golden era lives on through modern gaming platforms, offering thrill-seekers the same sense of adventure that once defined the Strip.
In 1928, when the Boulder Dam project looked certain, many owners were preparing for what they hoped would be substantial business from construction workers by converting downtown buildings into card clubs and licensing low-stakes games such as poker that were allowed under Nevada law.
Legalizing Gambling in Nevada
In 1930, real estate developer Thomas Carroll spoke for the majority of the business community when he placed full-page ads in local newspapers urging voters to elect to the legislature people who would support ‘wide-open gambling,’ which he claimed would turn Nevada into ‘the gambling ground of the United States.’ A few community leaders worried about the city's image if it became a gambling center, but most realized the benefits of open gambling as they, like the rest of the country, struggled through the Great Depression.
Indeed, as soon as the measure was approved in 1931, owners of hotels, cafes, bars and pharmacies, as well as gambling clubs, rushed to obtain licenses for table games and slot machines. In April 1931, the city commissioners issued licenses for sixty-six slot machines.
Gambling and the Birth of the Strip
Visiting journalists were amazed at the easy acceptance of gambling among Las Vegas residents and tourists. Worcester Taylor, a correspondent for the Hearst newspaper, found ‘a dozen gambling clubs ... filled day and night with men and women’ greedily playing a variety of gambling. Gambling operations expanded rapidly. In just a decade, over 500 slot machines were installed. The number of licensed table games also increased rapidly. Most of the action took place at five clubs: the Apache Casino, the Northern Club, the Las Vegas Club, the Frontier Club, and the Boulder Club.
Las Vegas: A City of Excess
Although community leaders often pointed out that their town had a significant number of places of worship and many civic and fraternal organizations, and that citizens were focused on mundane matters such as providing good schools and improving the town's infrastructure, this was not particularly helpful. Journalists preferred to report on the excesses of life in Las Vegas. Bruce Bliven of The New Republic concluded, ‘As far as one can tell from superficial observation, the only activities in Las Vegas, Nevada, are drinking, gambling, and prostitution.’
Efforts to Promote Tourism
Community leaders worked hard to change this image, especially as the Boulder Dam approached completion. A vigorous tourism promotion campaign was launched through the Chamber of Commerce to replace the dwindling construction payrolls on which the city had become so dependent. Thousands of promotional brochures were distributed, advertisements were placed in southwestern states, and booths were set up at rail, airline, and bus ticket offices throughout the country. The city also organized numerous sporting events such as regattas on Lake Mead, created by the Boulder Dam; horse racing; and an annual ‘Wild West’ festival and rodeo called Helldorado.
Las Vegas Becomes a Tourist Destination
The local media was fully supportive of the city's development as a tourist destination. The Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal staff sent only favorable stories through the news services. Las Vegas Age focused on the efforts of the Chamber of Commerce and promoted the city as a sports and convention city. Radio KENO, founded in 1940, quickly spread ‘Las Vegas fame’ to listeners in Arizona, Utah, California and Nevada. Tourists who listened to the station on the radio in their cars reported that their interest in Las Vegas was ‘piqued’ by the station's broadcasts.
The Rise of Las Vegas Weddings
Las Vegas promoters tried to sell their community as a gateway to many of the area's ‘scenic wonders.’ In addition to Boulder Dam, they highlighted the Grand Canyon and Zion and Bryce Canyons. KENO radio constantly used the slogan ‘Las Vegas, the center of the scenic Southwest’ in its announcements to remind listeners of these attractions.
The Wedding Capital of the World
After the state passed a law in 1931 allowing divorces after a six-week residency (the shortest of any state), thousands of people moved to Nevada to obtain residency. Although Reno, in northern Nevada, attracted the most divorcees, court fees and living expenses, which averaged more than $1,000 per divorce, became an important source of revenue for Las Vegas. By 1940, national magazines such as Look were comparing Vegas to Reno, pointing out that the former had a ‘wider variety of rough games’ and a ‘friendlier atmosphere’ than the latter.
The matrimonial business was even better. Because Nevada required no waiting period or medical certificates, Las Vegas creatively promoted easy ways to get married.
Las Vegas: A Thriving Marriage Industry
The presence of a licensing office at the train station, the 24-hour operation of the county clerk's office, and billboards along the highway directing couples to the county courthouse all provided easy access. Airlines in neighboring states even promised passengers that they could be married within an hour of arriving at the airport. Together, these efforts allowed Las Vegas to nearly quadruple the number of marriages between 1939 and 1941 to more than 21,000 per year. This ‘high-speed hitchhiking with lots of spectacle,’ in the words of Collier’s magazine, was indeed ‘making money.’
Next: The Wedding Industry's Impact on Las Vegas
In the next part, we’ll dive even deeper into how Las Vegas transformed fleeting romance into a thriving industry—one that would forever shape its identity as the wedding capital of the world.