History of Las Vegas
The first casino to be built on Highway 91 was the Pair-o-Dice Club in 1931, but the first on what is currently the Strip was the El Rancho Vegas,
opening on April 3, 1941, with 63 rooms. That casino stood for almost
20 years before being destroyed by a fire in 1960. Its success spawned a
second hotel on what would become the Strip, the Hotel Last Frontier, in 1942. Organized crime figures such as New York's Bugsy Siegel took interest in the growing gaming center leading to other resorts such as the Flamingo, which opened in 1946, and the Desert Inn, which opened in 1950. The funding for many projects was provided through the American National Insurance Company, which was based in the then notorious gambling empire of Galveston, Texas.
Las Vegas Boulevard South was previously called Arrowhead Highway, or Los Angeles Highway. The Strip was reportedly named by Los Angeles police officer Guy McAfee, after his hometown's Sunset Strip.
The first MGM Grand Hotel and Casino,
also a Kerkorian property, opened in 1973 with 2,084 rooms. At the
time, this was one of the largest hotels in the world by number of
rooms. The Rossiya Hotel
built in 1967 in Moscow, for instance, had 3200 rooms; however, most of
the rooms in the Rossiya Hotel were single rooms of 118 sq. ft (roughly
1/4 size of a standard room at the MGM Grand Resort). On November 21,
1980, the MGM Grand suffered the worst resort fire
in the history of Las Vegas as a result of electrical problems, killing
87 people. It reopened eight months later. In 1986, Kerkorian sold the
MGM Grand to Bally Manufacturing, and it was renamed Bally's.
The Wet 'n Wild water park
opened in 1985 and was located on the south side of the Sahara hotel.
The park closed at the end of the 2004 season and was later demolished.
The opening of The Mirage
in 1989 set a new level to the Las Vegas experience, as smaller hotels
and casinos made way for the larger mega-resorts. These huge facilities
offer entertainment and dining
options, as well as gambling and lodging. This change affected the
smaller, well-known and now historic hotels and casinos, like The Dunes, The Sands, the Stardust, and the Sahara.
In 1995, following the death of Dean Martin,
the lights along the Strip were dimmed in a sign of respect to him.
This was repeated in 1998 in honor of the recently deceased Frank Sinatra.
In 2005, Clark County renamed a section of Industrial Road (south of
Twain Avenue) as Dean Martin Drive, also as a tribute to the famous Rat Pack singer, actor, and frequent Las Vegas entertainer.
In an effort to attract families, resorts offered more attractions geared toward youth, but had limited success. The (current) MGM Grand opened in 1993 with Grand Adventures amusement park, but the park closed in 2000 due to lack of interest. Similarly, in 2003 Treasure Island closed its own video arcade and abandoned the previous pirate theme, adopting the new ti name.
In addition to the large hotels, casinos and resorts, the Strip is home to a few smaller casinos and other attractions, such as M&M World, Adventuredome and the Fashion Show Mall. Starting in the mid-1990s, the Strip became a popular New Year's Eve celebration destination.
With the opening of Bellagio, Venetian, and Wynn
resorts, the strip trended towards the luxurious high end segment
through most of the 2000s, while some older resorts added major
expansions and renovations, including some de-theming of the earlier
themed hotels. High end dining, specialty retail, spas and nightclubs
increasingly became options for visitors in addition to gambling at most
Strip resorts. There was also a trend towards expensive residential
condo units on the strip.
In 2004, MGM Mirage announced plans for Project CityCenter,
a 66-acre (27 ha), $7 billion multi-use project on the site of the
Boardwalk hotel and adjoining land. It consists of hotel, casino, condo,
retail, art, business and other uses on the site. City Center is
currently the largest such complex in the world. Construction began in
April 2006, with most elements of the project opened in late 2009.
In 2006, the Las Vegas Strip lost its longtime status as the world's
highest-grossing gambling center, falling to second place behind Macau.
In 2012, two large Ferris Wheels
and a retail district called Linq broke ground, in an attempt to
further diversify the attractions offered on the strip beyond that of
casino resorts.
The diversification continued in 2013 with MGM Resorts
International's announcement of plans to build a major indoor arena and
retail district behind New York-New York resort in partnership with Anschutz Entertainment Group. After a recent pause in new strip resort development, the Malaysian gaming company Genting Group bought the unfinished Echelon Place project with plans to build a new resort called Resorts World Las Vegas to open in 2016.
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