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| 7/1/2009 | It’s difficult to imagine that a city in the desert is now the gambling capital of the world.
It’s not close to anything. It’s flat. It’s brutally hot in the summer. But no place is Las Vegas Nevada when it comes to gambling.
It’s hard to imagine now, but Vegas was once basically a marsh.
Las Vegas was actually discovered by a Mexican traveling party in the early 1800s, as an Oasis on the way to Los Angeles. A Mexican scout named Rafael Riviera is believed to be the first non-Native American to discover the area. In the 1840s, a man named John Fremont camped at Las Vegas springs. Later, Mormons moved there to protect the mail route.
In the 1950s, however, the left, in part because of raids by Native Americans. Las Vegas was only a dot on a map after that until the early 1900s, when the railroad made it a key stop. The city was officially born in 1905.
Gambling was always a part of Las Vegas. In 1910, it was banned, but underground casinos opened everywhere and flourished. Gaming was illegal until 1931 – the same year the Hoover Dam project began.
World War II slowed down the growth of Vegas, but gambling continued. The proximity to Los Angeles made the city rife for profit.
Las Vegas was essentially born in 1946 after the war ended, when the Flamingo Hotel was founded by famous gangster Bugsy Siegel. His vision turned Vegas into a glamorous stop with many casinos, acts and legalized prostitution. For all purposes, Bugsy Siegel was the founder of modern day Las Vegas.
His success brought many other monster casinos as the building boom took off in the 1950s, when America was thriving in the postwar world. The city also did much to desegregate, as it built the Moulin Rouge, one of the first casinos open to all races.
For years, Vegas was run and dominated by mafia overlords from around the country. But the growth of the city was undeniable. By the 1960s, it was established as the gambling center of the United States if not the world.
In the 1960s, multiple coin slots arrived, and Vegas was well on its way to the big time.
However, modern Vegas was not born until the late 1970s, when Atlantic City opened. Fearful of the competition Vegas made its move. It opened casinos like Circus Circus, entertainment centers that appealed to families as well as degenerate gamblers.
Treasure Island and other such hotels followed, and the theme hotels dominated. Many older casinos were demolished to make room. The Excalibur and Luxor brought bigger, themed hotels to Vegas.
The largest hotel and entertainment center in the world – the MGM Grand – followed.
Vegas was no longer a mafia-run city. It was now everything that it had always purported itself to be.
The growth of poker and the World Series brought new attention to Las Vegas in the early 2000s, especially Chris Moneymaker’s win in 2003.At that point, Vegas was cemented as the center of the gambling universe.
The city has undergone many changes, but no place in the world is like Las Vegas, with its legalized prostitution and world class gambling. It is home to rounders, grifters and degenerates. But it is also a world class city. |
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