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Vegas4Visitors Q&A Archive: History

Questions:

What was on that vacant lot across from the Sahara?

What is the oldest hotel/casino in Las Vegas?

What year did air conditioning come to the Vegas casinos?

What plot of land had the most different hotels on it?

From: Brian in Denver, Colorado

Question: What was on that vacant lot across from The Sahara and are they ever going to build something else there?

Answer: That dusty lot is actually an important part of Vegas history. It was the site of the very first resort hotel on what would eventually become The Strip. It was called El Rancho and it opened in 1941, five years before Bugsy Siegel got the Flamingo open. You can see pictures and read more on the El Rancho page in the Vegas4Visitors.com Online Museum.

The lot has been empty since 1960 when the hotel burned down and small portions of it have been sold off (that big Hilton timeshare is on part of the former property). The rest of it is owned by the same folks who own The Sahara and yes, it most likely will be developed at some point. Now that the North Strip is gaining momentum it may be sooner rather than later.

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Question: What is the oldest hotel/casino in Las Vegas?

Answer: The oldest hotel/casino in the entire city of Las Vegas is the Golden Gate, located at the corner of Main Street and the Fremont Street Experience in the downtown area. It opened as the Hotel Nevada in 1906 with room rates of $1 per day and has been operating ever since. The hotel did go through some changes - most notably the years when it operated as Sal Sagev (Las Vegas spelled backward) - and the casino was closed between 1909 and 1931 when gambling was illegal in Nevada.

The oldest continually operating hotel/casino on The Strip is The Frontier. It opened in 1942 and was the second hotel/casino built on what would eventually become The Strip.

The owner of The Frontier has plans to tear it down and build a massive new resort. If that happens, the mantle of oldest on The Strip will be passed to Bugsy's folly - The Flamingo Las Vegas, which opened in 1946.

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Question: What year did air conditioning come to the Vegas casinos?

From: Jody in Stockton, California

Answer: Hi Jody – I love questions like this.

For part of the answer I turned to our friends at the Las Vegas Strip History website. If you haven’t visited their site, I really encourage you do so. It’s packed with information, stories, and photos about all of the hotels on the Vegas Strip.

According to their site, the very first hotel to be built on what would eventually become The Strip was the El Rancho. As part of their western theme they had a windmill tower that housed air-conditioning units, pumping air across ice and then into the hotel. That was standard equipment in all of the subsequent hotels built.

But through some investigation of my own it appears that the first casino hotel to have air-conditioning was the Sal Segav (Las Vegas spelled backward), now known as The Golden Gate, at the head of Fremont Street in Downtown. According to their history air-conditioning was installed in 1932.

We have photographs of the Golden Gate/Sal Segav and historical items from the El Rancho in the Vegas4Visitors.com Online Memorabilia museum.

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From: Eleanor in Mobile, Alabama

Question: After reading your column for a long time I know you’re a bit of a Vegas history buff, so here’s a question for you… which plot of land on the Strip has had the most different hotel/casinos on it? For instance, before Bellagio was the Dunes. What was it before that?

Answer: Eleanor, you know me way too well. I love these kinds of questions.

First, before it was the Dunes it was a big empty plot of desert. So that particular bit of Strip acreage has only seen two hotels.

For the answer to your primary question, I turned (as I often do) to the Las Vegas Strip History Website. If you haven’t taken the time to look at the material they have to offer, you’re really missing out.

I’m going to take you literally when you ask about the area that has had the most hotel/casinos on it. There are several places that have had a bunch of smaller motel or motor inns on them but we’re only going to take a look at casino hotels.

Using that as our guide, it looks like the winner has to be where the Mirage now stands. It’s first incarnation was as a nightclub called the Red Rooster, but eventually that became the Sans Souci Hotel in the late 50s and included about 100 rooms, a showroom, and a casino.

In the early 60s the property changed hands and was remodeled and renamed as The Castaways (no relation to the later Castaways near Downtown). The casino portion of the property closed in 1964 although the hotel, restaurant, and showroom stayed open.

Then it reopened in 1967 as Oliver’s New Castaways Casino with new owners. A few years later Howard Hughes’ company bought the joint and in the next few years it was remodeled again and renamed back to just the Castaways.

Then in 1987 that hotel was torn down to make way for The Mirage.

So if we count each of those incarnations as separate, then that property has had five hotel-casinos.

Also high on the list would be where Bally’s is currently located, which had the Bonanza and the MGM Grand before it, and the land where Harrah’s is now which had the River Boat and Holiday Casino hotels before it.

Thanks for the question Eleanor.

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