Year-round rates now range between $50.00 and $300.00 a night. The best hotels charged $7.50 a day back then, a motel, $3.00. There were about 1,800 hotel rooms on the Strip. (It also was the quickie divorce and marriage capital of the U.S.). the era of Elvis, the Rat Pack and Liberace. Gamblers used silver dollars, later to be replaced with silver-dollar-size plastic chips.īy the early 1950's Las Vegas had become a true vacation destination. 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. Minsky's Follies - 1957 - (Courtesy: UNLV) Built with mob money, the Flamingo opened on New Year's Eve 1946. One of the earliest strip resorts was the Flamingo Hotel, built by gangsters Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel and Meyer Lansky.

A three mile dusty desert road nicknamed the 'Strip' sprang up south of downtown.Ī 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. It got its start in 1931 when Clark County (Nevada) issued a three month gaming license to a downtown Las Vegas club. Nevada was the first state to legalize casino-style gambling. 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. In 2005 - 100 years later - Vegas commemorated and celebrated its centennial. a name it got due to the availability of spring-fed water. Las Vegas is generally recognized to have begun in 1905 when the Union Pacific Railroad began passing through a desert oasis.

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