Las Vegas Is an Ever-Changing, Ever-Developing Phenomenon

Some 120 years ago, give or take a year here or there, Las Vegas was founded as a railway stop. The land around the depot was divided into lots that were auctioned off, and a town was founded.

Natives had been using the area for 10,000 years, and several explorers and traders, and later Mormons, set up in the area, but they attracted few others. The new town founded in 1905 was not exactly a hub of commercial activity. However, Las Vegas got a break in 1931, when the Nevada Legislature made divorce easier and legalized gambling. Coincidentally, construction began on Hoover Dam. With those three events, the Las Vegas we know today became a possibility.

The events set the stage for a future far beyond its previous potential. Without 1931, Las Vegas might have become just another small crossroads town with a city hall, hotel, a couple of bars, and two or three schools. But the change in divorce laws allowed Nevada to develop a kind of tourism niche that no other state could exploit. Other states had limited divorce to a small number of causes and the process required a long time before becoming final. In Nevada, divorce was easy and quick. Celebrities and the well-to-do flocked to Nevada to take advantage of the law. In the beginning, most people went to Reno to unhitch; Las Vegas only got a small portion. Still, Las Vegas benefited from the publicity. The media hardly discriminated between Reno and Las Vegas; to the press, Nevada was Nevada, so Las Vegas and Reno were the same.

For the first time in its history, Nevada was in the news. The divorce business jumped onto the front page of newspapers and even onto the big screen. In 1939, the movie The Women made divorce and Nevada glamorous and although a backlot dude ranch stands in for Reno, that’s where it was set. As late as 1961, a Nevada divorce was still being made into Hollywood drama. The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable was not as glamorous as The Women with Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, and Joan Fontaine, but it still served to publicize the Silver State.

In December 1947, the Mapes Hotel opened in Reno. When he planned the hotel, Charlie Mapes had divorce seekers in mind. He had no competition. In those years, divorce everywhere else was nearly a sin and almost a crime — forbidden fruit. But when Nevada wore a divorce mantel, it had a touch of romance, glamour, risqué sprinkled with naughty. Besides the movies, there were books and magazine articles on Nevada divorce. That publicity gave the state its first 15 minutes of fame on the national stage. It would not be its last, at least for Las Vegas.

The American economy is consumer based. For the economy to be healthy and growing, people need to be employed and spending money. Economists say the single most important element in consumer spending is income. During the Great Depression, one-fourth to one-third of the workforce was unemployed and the country’s gross domestic product had fallen by one-third. Thirty percent of the population lived in rural communities and on farms. Few people had money to spend on fueling a consumer economy. Nevada, however, got lucky. Hoover Dam brought workers to Nevada in the midst of the Great Depression. Southern Nevada had jobs and workers had money.

Las Vegas also had a newly minted gaming industry to help those workers relax and have a little fun. Northern Nevada had divorces and a transcontinental highway to bring people with money to spend to town, and the casinos gave them a place to spend it. With those twin engines, Nevada grew and gambling grew. But the Depression kept both the divorce and casino businesses from reaching their full potential. That would have to wait until the Depression ended, the world fought a war, and soldiers returned home in the millions.

When Johnny came marching home again, it was a new country. America was all bright and shiny. There were many new things and new ways to spend money. The men traded their uniforms for work clothes. Unlike the dark days before the war, there were jobs for everyone. The postwar jobs paid more and offered a future and hope; those elements had been missing during the Great Depression. The fighting men also got busy fathering the Baby Boomer generation, a generation of consumers that drove the economy for the next 50 years. By the 1980s, the Baby Boomers were also the core market for casinos.

The postwar years produced an array of consumer products to boggle the mind: household appliances, cars with fins and dual headlights, television sets, new houses located in cute little neighborhoods equipped with shopping centers. The nation had a network of interstate highways and every family had a car, money to spend, three-day holidays, and vacations.

It was a perfect setting for casino gambling in Nevada to grow. It grew in Reno and Las Vegas. But Reno was plagued with a say-no restrictive mentality that kept a lid on casino growth and expansion. Las Vegas was blessed with a go-go, go-getter, say-yes mentality. Nothing was going to hold Las Vegas back except financing and imagination. The city solved both issues, although the financing issue was not an easy nut to crack.

In the first years after WW II, the only way to borrow money for a casino was through the mob or a labor union. Organized crime funded many of the first casinos on the Strip and were still holding some hidden ownership into the mid-1970s. The last mob property was the Stardust. In 1976 and again in 1983, state investigations uncovered skimming operations there. Millions of dollars were being siphoned off and sent to Chicago and Kansas City. Nevada Gaming Control forced the sale of the property, ending the mob presence. The other source of funding for the early gaming operators was the Teamsters Union. Now, some would say that was organized crime as well, but regulators did not share that view. Still, lawmakers and regulators realized a better funding mechanism was needed.

That mechanism was the Corporate Gaming Act of 1969. The Strip of 2024 is only possible because of that act. Nevada recognized that without some legitimate sources of funding, casinos were forced into dark corners to borrow money. A study defined the issue like this: “The problem was to devise a means to provide equity capital and wider investment participation and still maintain the necessary controls over the operations of the gaming establishments.”

The act made it possible for publicly traded companies to own casinos and gave the new gaming corporations access to public equity funding and institutional debt financing. It took the gaming regulators the best part of a decade to set up the structure necessary to protect the state, the customers, and the investors. The internal control system tightened up accounting and gave lenders greater confidence in casinos as businesses. Circus Circus, Caesars, MGM, Boyd, and Hilton took advantage of the new laws and regulations. Today, the gaming corporations, or their derivates, that bought into the Las Vegas market at that time own most of the casinos in the United States.

By the end of the 1970s, new visionaries were appearing, taking advantage of the expanded funding opportunities. The most famous was Steve Wynn. He has been discredited since and driven out of the industry. But in the 1990s, Wynn’s resorts defined the Strip. Stunning new properties and ever-growing revenue and visitor counts characterized Las Vegas through the end of 20th century. The big resorts now sported themes, such as castles, cities, volcanos, pyramids, and the old standby, a circus.

The 21st century saw the beginning of a completely different trend, freestanding event centers: observation wheels, arenas, stadiums, and a sphere. With them came music festivals, sporting events, rodeos, car races, and mega-conventions. Such major events as New Year’s Eve, the Formula 1 race, the National Rodeo Finals, the NFL Draft, the Super Bowl, and others each draw between 300,000 and 400,000 people to Las Vegas and the Strip.

Las Vegas now lays claim to a new set of titles: Entertainment Capital of the World, Sports Town USA, Restaurant Capital of the Nation, and some minor ones like the Wedding Capital of America.

The end of 2023 really brought the new trend into focus. The November Nevada gaming revenue was up 12.5 percent from the previous year. The $1.3 billion was the 32nd month in a row that revenue exceeded a billion dollars. But November was not a great month everywhere in Nevada; in fact, except for the Strip, most of the state had a mediocre month. It is an old story: Nevada gaming revenues are driven by activities in Las Vegas, Las Vegas is driven by the Strip, and the Strip is driven by baccarat.

In November, the Strip was up 22.6 percent to $820 million, while baccarat was up 200 percent to $180 million. Blackjack was up 26 percent to $121 million. The Strip had the Formula 1 race to thank for those numbers. The race draws high rollers from all over the world who, as the number shows, like to play a little baccarat. In December, the rodeo finals will show another demographic, another type of player, but still good for gaming revenue. The calendar in December will also help Las Vegas prosper; there were five Fridays, five Saturdays, and five Sundays, with New Year’s Eve on Sunday. And, of course, coming up in 2024, another whopper is on the calendar.

On February 11, Super Bowl LVIII will be played at Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders. Nothing symbolizes the evolution of Las Vegas and of change in the image of Las Vegas in the public’s eye more than the Super Bowl. Just 15 years ago, the National Football league considered Las Vegas a threat to the integrity of the league. Beyond casinos and gambling, the NFL refused to allow ads for even the city itself to appear during the Big Game. In 2009, the NFL relaxed its long-standing policy and allowed Las Vegas to advertise.

The relationship between Las Vegas and professional sports has come a long way since then. Now, Las Vegas is home to NFL, NHL, and WNBA teams, with an MLB team presumably on the way. Boosters are also hoping to bring an NBA team. Suddenly, the former Sin City is no longer a threat to anyone. Instead, it is a great place to be. Las Vegas draws record crowds and the national media spotlight to any game played there. And now the Super Bowl will be played just off the Strip. The insults of 2008 still sting, but the revenge of 2024 is sweet.

It has been a very long trip from the Depression era, when Las Vegas struggled to keep its head above water, saved by legalized divorce, casinos, and dam construction. Ninety years later in the third decade of the 21st century, Las Vegas is a must see, a place to participate in the major rituals and activities of American popular culture. What a ride!