Las Vegas

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Tony Brewer

The evolution of Las Vegas, Nevada, is one of the most intriguing of any city in the United States. Desert oasis and water and electricity supplier for most of the Southwest, and a legendary gambler's paradise that is one of the world's most tantalizing and popular vacation spots, the city is most famously cast in the spuriously glamorous image of the Mafia. As such, it has come to color the vocabulary of popular culture through countless novels, movies, and television dramas. Surrounded by the Mojave Desert and flanked by mountain ranges, Las Vegas came of age in the shadow of the post-World War II American Dream, a shining example of excess as success, whose neon-lit casino strip glows on the horizon--a beacon attracting thousands of folk eager to try their luck. An adult Disneyland in southwestern Nevada, this dusty tinsel town effuses Old West history while raking in the house winnings, and is reviled as often as it is romanticized for the glorious vice hidden in its stark desert landscape. Yet, while the popularity of its glitz and show biz glamour waxes and wanes, the bright lights and obvious faade of Vegas are lodged as a permanent and familiar backdrop in the American consciousness.

In 1829, Antonio Armijo, traveling to Los Angeles, attempted to shorten the route by going through the desert instead of around it. While traversing the Old Spanish Trail, he discovered water and named the site Las Vegas--"The Meadows." Here, Spanish traders eased the rigors of desert travel, but it was not until 1844 that the area was actually charted by John C. Fremont, an explorer after whom much of downtown Las Vegas came to be named. Ten years later, Brigham Young sent Mormon missionaries from Salt Lake City to colonize the Las Vegas Valley. They built an adobe fort and began converting the local Paiute Indians, but desert life soon proved too harsh for them and they abandoned their outpost in 1857.

Nevada became a state in 1864, but it was not until 1904, as America expanded its borders from "sea to shining sea," that Las Vegas saw significant activity. That was the year when the San Pedro-Los Angeles-Salt Lake Railroad began laying track through the valley. The company bought up prime land and water rights from the remaining homesteaders and operated a dusty watering stop that soon attracted the development of hotels, saloons, a few thousand residents, and the inevitable red-light district. Any further expansion, such as it was, remained slow until 1928 when the Boulder Dam Project Act, an attempt to tame and harness the raging Colorado River, was signed into law. President Herbert Hoover appropriated $165 million dollars for the project: the largest anti-gravity dam in the world, to be built 40 miles outside of Las Vegas on the Nevada-Arizona state line.

When construction of the dam began in 1931, however, Governor Fred Balzar also approved a "wide open" gambling bill proposed by rancher and Assemblyman Phil Tobia. Though gambling had long been around in Las Vegas, it had been outlawed several times, and Tobia maintained that regulation of the pastime would increase tourism and boost the state's economy. Thus, gambling was made permanently legal in all of Nevada except for one place--Boulder City. It was the height of the Great Depression and Hoover, anxious to ensure a return on his investment, feared that such distractions as gambling and prostitution would undermine the progress of the thousands of workers flooding the valley to work on the dam. The Federal government, therefore, founded the casino and brothel-free Boulder City, specifically to cater for this influx of residents.

By the time the Hoover Dam was completed in 1935 the economy in southern Nevada was booming. Many of the workers put down roots in the area, and the dam now provided a seemingly endless supply of water and electricity for Nevada and its surrounding four states. The onset of World War II brought further prosperity to the region when pilots and gunners came to train at the Las Vegas Aerial Gunnery School, which would later become Nellis Air Force Base and the Nevada Test Site.

In 1941, Las Vegas boasted only a handful of luxury hotels and small but successful casinos. That year, however, Thomas Hull opened El Rancho, just off Highway 91 on the road to Los Angeles. With a Western motif, a hundred rooms, a large swimming pool, and massive parking lots, El Rancho was the model for the modern casino and it opened to almost immediate success. Later that year, the Last Frontier Hotel opened just up the road and the famous Las Vegas Strip was born.

In 1946, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, a New York City mob boss protecting interests on the West Coast, recognized the vast potential for organized crime in Las Vegas. Taking advantage of cheap land, legalized gambling, and--initially, at least--friendly police relations, Bugsy Siegel began spending vast amounts of money on building the lavish Fabulous Flamingo casino, which ushered in the neon era that came to characterize Vegas night life. Though there were always celebrities in attendance and every night was like New Years' Eve, not even the Flamingo's glittering faade could hide the fact that it was paying out more in winnings than it kept in profits. The situation led to mob dissension, and Siegel was killed six months later in a gangland hit. Ironically, business at the casino boomed thereafter, especially as tourists flocked to see the Fabulous Flamingo, the house that Bugsy built.

Many other gangsters followed Siegel's lead, and several grand casinos sprang up on the strip, well known among them the Horseshoe, Sands, Sahara, Riviera, and Tropicana. Each was bigger and brighter than the last, sporting gigantic pools, thousands of rooms, and garish neon signs. Nobody in America would (or could) lift a finger to halt the millions of dollars in laundered money that poured into the desert town in the 1950s, while ever-increasing numbers of celebrities, big spenders, and high rollers enjoyed rubbing elbows in this Mecca of gambling and organized crime.