Nevada Celebrates 75 Years of Legalized Gambling

Nevada Celebrates 75 Years of Legalized Gambling

Nevada Celebrates 75 Years of Legalized Gambling
This week, Nevada celebrates three- quarters of a century since the legalization of gambling, and Nevadans are taking time to reflect on the development that tuned their state from a dusty desert no- man’s land to an international gaming and tourist wonderland.

It all started on March 19, 1931, when the state of Nevada legalized all forms of gambling in order to create a tourist industry and to make up for the silver mining relocation to Mexico. It was the first state to legalize gambling by almost 50 years, and remains even today the state that has by far done so more completely than any other.

The first gambling license was awarded to Mayme Stocker, a woman who was the proprietress of the Northern Club on Fremont Street.

In the 1930s, there were no free- standing gambling establishments; small taverns and bars were the only establishments to feature gambling. Gambling was regulated, and licenses such as Stocker’s were issued by individual counties.

The first free- standing gambling venues were built in the 1940s. The first, the El Rancho Vegas casino, was located on the Las Vegas Strip. Not long thereafter, the Last Frontier and the Desert Inn were added to the Las Vegas new- style gambling repertoire. This generation of casinos, in addition to differing from their predecessors in that they were free- standing, aimed to establish themselves as recreational destinations, with attached hotel accommodations and swimming pools.

After WWII, influential mob figures, fleeing the relatively strong arm of the law in the East, moved westward. Many settled in Nevada and became a presence in the gambling industry. Bugsy Siegel, the most famous of the Las Vegas mob figures, opened the Flamingo Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The casino, which was financed by mob boss Meyer Lansky, added another feature common to modern- day casinos to the Las Vegas standard: a concert hall featuring all of the Hollywood sensations of the day.

However, despite the fact that the mobsters added new and successful innovations to the Las Vegas gambling casino world, their presence and some of their practices did not sit well with officials in the state, or, in fact, in the federal government. In 1955, Nevada created the Gaming Control Board, in part to placate federal authorities. That institution was followed by the Gaming Commission in 1963. The stakes were high; Nevada had to fight against anti- gambling activists from all over the United States, as well as against the partnership in the public mind of gambling and organized crime.

Growth was rapid after Nevada adopted new regulatory methods, especially after the first mega- casino, the Mirage, opened in 1989.

"Without gaming, Nevada would be a wonderful truck stop on the way to California," said Jim Medick, the CEO of MRC Group, a Las Vegas market research firm.

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