Las Vegas Strip

Early years (1930s–1990s)

The first casino to be built on Highway 91 was the Pair-o-Dice Club in 1931, but the first casino-resort on what is currently the Strip was the El Rancho Vegas, which opened with 63 rooms on April 3, 1941 (and was 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, and funded 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 named by Los Angeles police officer and businessman Guy McAfee, after his hometown’s Sunset Strip.

In 1950, mayor Ernie Cragin of the City of Las Vegas sought to annex the Strip, which was unincorporated territory, in order to expand the city’s tax base to fund his ambitious building agenda and pay down the city’s rising debt. Instead, Gus Greenbaum of the Flamingo led a group of casino executives to lobby the Clark County commissioners for town status. Two unincorporated towns were eventually created, Paradise and Winchester. More than two decades later, the Supreme Court of Nevada struck down a 1975 Nevada state law that would have folded the Strip and the rest of the urban areas of Clark County into the City of Las Vegas.

Caesars Palace was established in 1966. In 1968, Kirk Kerkorian purchased the Flamingo and hired Sahara Hotels Vice President Alex Shoofey as president. Alex Shoofey brought along 33 of Sahara’s top executives. The Flamingo was used to train future employees of the International Hotel, which was under construction. Opening in 1969, the International Hotel, with 1,512 rooms, began the era of mega-resorts. The International is known as Westgate Las Vegas today. 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 3,200 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. It 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. The Rio and the Excalibur opened in 1990. 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, and the Stardust.

The lights along the Strip have been dimmed in a sign of respect to six performers and one other major Las Vegas figure upon their deaths. They are Elvis Presley (1977), Sammy Davis Jr. (1990), Dean Martin (1995), George Burns (1996), Frank Sinatra (1998), former UNLV basketball head coach Jerry Tarkanian (2015), and Don Rickles (2017). The Strip lights were dimmed later in 2017 as a memorial to victims of a mass shooting at a concert held adjacent to the Strip. In 2005, Clark County renamed a section of Industrial Road (south of Twain Avenue) Dean Martin Drive 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 MGM Grand Adventures Theme 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 many attractions, such as M&M’s World, Adventuredome and the Fashion Show Mall. Starting in the mid-1990s, the Strip became a popular New Year’s Eve celebration destination.

2000–present

With the opening of Bellagio, Venetian, Palazzo, Wynn and Encore 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 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. Also 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, the High Roller Ferris wheel and a retail district called The LINQ Promenade broke ground in an attempt to diversify attractions beyond that of casino resorts. Renovations and rebrandings such as The Cromwell Las Vegas and the SLS Las Vegas continued to transform the Strip in 2014. The Las Vegas Festival Grounds opened in 2015. In 2016, T-Mobile Arena, The Park, and the Park Theater opened.

On October 1, 2017, a mass shooting occurred on the Strip at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, adjacent to the Mandalay Bay hotel. 60 people were killed and 867 were injured. This incident became the deadliest mass shooting in modern United States history.

In 2018, the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino was renamed the Park MGM and 2019, the SLS retook its Sahara name.

Future developments

• Genting Group bought the site of the Stardust/Echelon Place with plans to build and open Resorts World Las Vegas in summer 2021.
• Astral Hotels plans to build Astral, a 34-story, 620-room hotel and casino on the southern Las Vegas Strip. Construction is expected to begin in 2020 for a 2022 opening.
• Dream Las Vegas, a casino and boutique hotel, is planned to break ground on the southern Las Vegas Strip by early 2021, with completion by early 2023.
• The opening of 4,000 room The Drew Las Vegas (formerly planned as the Fontainebleau) has been pushed back to the second quarter of 2022.
• As of June 2019, construction of the All Net Resort and Arena is expected to start “as soon as possible” and will take about 3 years.
• The MSG Sphere Las Vegas, including a monorail stop, is being built behind The Palazzo and The Venetian. It was scheduled to open in 2021, but has been rescheduled to sometime in 2023.