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Top-drawer talent was booked for its lounges and dozens of celebrities attended its Christmas Day opening. In 1946 mobster Bugsy Siegel, backed by East Coast Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky’s Mexican drug money, opened the Flamingo, a swank resort that took its cues from Hollywood, not Deadwood.

Other hotel-casinos soon followed, and the section of highway became known as “the Strip.” Most were built around the regional or Old West themes that were popular on Fremont Street. In 1941 the El Rancho Vegas resort opened on a section of U.S. When the dam was completed in 1936, cheap hydroelectricity powered the flashing signs of Fremont’s “Glitter Gulch.” Las Vegas: The Strip, the Mob and the Age of Glamour Casinos and showgirl venues opened up on Fremont Street, the town’s sole paved road, to attract the project’s workers. In 1931 construction began on the massive Boulder Dam (later renamed the Hoover Dam), drawing thousands of workers to a site just east of the city. By the time gambling was legalized again in 1931, organized crime already had roots in the city. Nevada outlawed gambling in 1910 but the practice continued in speakeasies and illicit casinos.

The future downtown was platted and auctioned by railroad company backers, and Las Vegas was incorporated in 1911. In 1905 the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake railroad arrived in Las Vegas, connecting the city with the Pacific and the country’s main rail networks. Their settlement was unsuccessful, but their abandoned fort was taken over by Octavius Gass, who named the area the “Los Vegas Rancho” (the altered spelling was to avoid confusion with Las Vegas, New Mexico). Little changed in the valley following the 1848 shift from Mexican to United States rule until 1855, when Brigham Young sent a group of Mormon settlers to the area. The Strip's first wedding chapel, the Little Church of the West, opened in 1942. Las Vegas embraced the concept of an even quicker marriage, with no blood tests or waiting periods.

Rivera named the valley Las Vegas, “the meadows,” after its spring-watered grasses.ĭid you know? From the early 1900s Nevada was known as a place where unhappy couples could get a relatively quick divorce. The first person of European ancestry to enter the Las Vegas valley was Rafael Rivera, who scouted the area in 1821 as part of Antonio Armijo’s expedition to open up a trade route-the Old Spanish Trail-between New Mexico and California. Canyon petroglyphs attest to human presence in southern Nevada for more than 10,000 years, and members of the Paiute tribe were in the area as early as A.D.

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