Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Nevada: The Wild Rise of Sin City with Sharon McMahon

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

In this episode, Sharon walks through the last two centuries of history in Las Vegas to uncover the making of America’s “Sin City.” The Las Vegas strip has not always been glitz and glamour and its history is marked by brushes with Spanish settlers, the mafia, wall street millionaires, the Mormon Church, and most of all, the U.S. government. Tracing back to the 1820s, Sharon explores how Las Vegas developed from illegal speakeasies during prohibition to modern mega-resorts that attract over 42 million visitors annually. Listen to learn how the Hoover Dam, the 18th amendment, and atomic bombs turned Las Vegas into the entertainment mecca we know and love today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my friends. I love today's episode. I love that you're here. One of the things I am super curious about, or I should say I was super curious about, is how did Las Vegas get to be Las Vegas? Who decided that? I wanted to know. So I did a deep dive and I have the scoop for you. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Las Vegas was first explored by the Spanish in the 1820s. Of course, indigenous groups had lived there for thousands of years. But the Spanish began to explore the region that is now Las Vegas in the 1820s. One of the reasons it was of interest is that there were springs there, water springs, water trapped underground. And it sort of sporadically rose to the surface and formed an oasis and had all of this desert plant life. And so the Spanish named the region Las Vegas because it means the meadows in Spanish.

That's how it got its name. It had vegetation in what was otherwise a very dusty deserts. In the 1850s, Mormon pioneers began to settle that region. Today, of course, we refer to people who belong to the Church of Latter-day Saints as people who are part of the LDS faith. At the time, they were called Mormon pioneers. They eventually decided this is not the place that we are going to settle permanently, at least for the time being, but it was one of the earlier European groups that settled in that region. So in 1864, they added Nevada to the Union. It became the 36th state of the Union. Of course, during that timeframe, the United States was all about consolidating its power. And this was during the time of the Civil War. They wanted to strengthen the Union, meaning the Union of free states. So they added it to the Union in 1864, and that just gave the Union, not the Confederacy, gave the Union more strength

and more power. Let us zoom ahead. Let's just buzz past the 1870s and 1880s and get to the 1890s. Have you heard of William Clark? You know who he is? Well, he is who Clark County, Nevada is named after, where Las Vegas is. William Clark was from the East Coast and he eventually settled in Montana. There were gold mines in Montana and he made a ton of money doing a variety of activities related to gold mining, like supplying gold mines, investing in railroads, copper mining. In fact, at one point, he owned several railroads. Las Vegas was established as a maintenance stop for William Clark's railroads. Railroads, plural. He owned the Salt Lake Railroad, the San Pedro Railroad, the Los Angeles Railroad. And this was a maintenance

stop for them as they were traveling along destinations throughout the American West. Because it was established as a maintenance stop, it ensured that there were stable water sources because the railroad helped ensure that. Once there were stable water sources, then that brought people. That is when the growth began to happen in the Las Vegas region. If you have water, we can live here. It's hard for humans to live where there's no water, turns out. So in 1905, William Clark auctioned off 110 acres of land, and that became part of Las Vegas's downtown. In 1911, Las Vegas was incorporated into Clark County and gambling was outlawed in Las Vegas during that timeframe because of a Nevada statewide ban on gambling. However, Las Vegas was mostly occupied by railroad workers, by ranchers, by saloon owners. It truly was the wild, wild west.

Like who is out there gambling, drinking, all that stuff? It is people that were living in Las Vegas at the turn of the century. And so even though it was illegal, illegal speakeasies, bootleg casinos, like secret gambling halls. They continued to flourish. First of all, think about the logistics of this. When you live in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is so far away from anything else at the turn of the century, it was much easier to get away with things. It was much easier to just take things into the back room of a saloon and nobody would be any the wiser. So Las Vegas began to develop this reputation for those kinds of more illicit activities like gambling, like drinking, et cetera. And it began to attract people that

enjoyed those festivities. Basically, there was just this sort of widespread disregard for the law. And as such, it became a breeding ground for organized crime. Turns out members of organized crime rings are also interested in things like gambling, trafficking of alcohol, because during this timeframe was when we were deep into prohibition, organized crime began to thrive in Las Vegas. So the 1930s were really a pivotal time in Las Vegas history. First of all, President Hoover in 1930 signed the bill that gave the money to build what at the time was called the Boulder Dam, but is now known as the Hoover Dam, which is a sight to behold. The Hoover Dam is still a tourist attraction. In 1931, as a result of the Great Depression, Nevada changed its laws. Nevada was

looking for a way to turn its economy around and to attract people to move back to the area. Because when you're having tremendous economic difficulty, living in remote areas in the desert can sometimes be more difficult than moving back east to live with your family, to live where there's water. So they changed their laws to legalize gambling in casinos in an effort to attract economic activity and to attract people to moving back to the region. And then in 1933, the United States repealed Prohibition. Those three things in the early 1930s set up the dominoes for Las Vegas to become what it is. We have the building of a major attraction. Of course, the Hoover Dam was not built to be a tourist attraction. It was built to dam a river that was then going to be an important

source of water and power. But it is a tourist attraction, and it was a feat of engineering. So we begin building the Hoover Dam. We change Nevada's laws so that gambling becomes legal in casinos and begin to attract more people to the area. And then Prohibition gets repealed. And so now you have people being able to legally drink and gamble in casinos. That was a huge game changer. It was no longer only people who were breaking the law who were engaged in those kinds of activities. It was legal. And because it was legal, respectable

people could do it. So construction workers began flooding Las Vegas, and the population boomed during the Great Depression. The population grew from around 5,000 people to 25,000 people in a very short period of time. Most of that was men, and local business owners were looking for ways to cater to men. business owners were looking for ways to cater to men. So it began to attract activities that we won't go into on this podcast, but that you can imagine would cater to the type of man who was interested in traveling to do some kind of drinking and gambling in the literal Wild West. Crime and mafia rings continued to flourish. They began to establish these very elaborate ways to entertain all of these men who were

flocking to the region. So in 1931, Clark County issued its first gambling license, and then a bunch of other gambling licenses were quickly issued as well. Fremont Street is where many of those gambling establishments resided. It was the first paved street in Las Vegas. And Fremont Street had the city's first traffic light in 1931. I'm Jenna Fisher, and I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs.

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Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. The Hoover Dam was completed in 1935. The Southern Nevada Power Company became the first utility service to create and supply power from the Hoover Dam. Southern Nevada Power then began supplying power to the city of Las Vegas and to Fremont Street. And it was just like, ta-da! Suddenly everything is electricity. We have all of this

power coming from the finished dam project. And people begin to call Las Vegas Glitter Gulch because all of these businesses had electric lights and all of these huge casinos that could then have lights that were on 24-7. By the time most of the construction was done in Las Vegas, Las Vegas was well-established enough that it began attracting more visitors. And it began attracting a different type of visitor, not men who wanted to visit the Wild West, but a more established, higher class, higher social status type of individual, somebody who wanted to see the feat of engineering that was the Hoover Dam, and it began creating a need for higher class hotels. If you're a well-to-do married couple,

you don't necessarily want to stay above a saloon, right? You want to stay somewhere nice. You want to see what there is to see. And so in 1941, the El Rancho Vegas Resort opened just outside of the downtown area. And then when other hotels and casinos saw the success of the El Rancho, they began opening casinos and hotels on this piece of land outside of what was Las Vegas proper in what is now known as the Strip. A lot of them were built around this sort of like Old West theme because by the 1940s, the Old West was kind of in the past, but people were still interested in it. So they built them around this old west theme until 1946 when a mobster whose name was Bugsy Siegel, if you're into organized crime rings, the mob,

you definitely recognize his name. He opened a hotel, like a resort, called The Flamingo. And it was more Hollywood than Old West. He brought in a celebrity, the comedian Jimmy Durante. Ultimately, he had a kind of a string of bad luck because there was bad weather. Too many people wanted to come, and he didn't have enough hotel rooms, so they left and went to other casinos. But it set a precedent, and it created what we now know as this sort of glitzy Las Vegas. People saw the Flamingos' success and realized that maybe Old West theming isn't the way to go. Maybe more Hollywood glitz and glamour is the way to go. So during the 1950s and 60s, mobsters,

organized crime people, helped fund projects like the Sahara and the Sands and the Showboat and the Riviera. The money that built those casinos was sort of a mixture of Wall Street banks, organized crime, and the Mormon church. One of the things that I found very interesting was many times investors could not get a traditional bank loan from just like a New York type bank, but they could get a loan from a bank that was owned by a member of the LDS community. And so Las Vegas, as we know it, was in part funded by the Mormon church because it was a way that they could make money and they were willing to engage in a slightly riskier type

of investment for the potential for a large return. And other people who wanted to invest in those kinds of projects and couldn't get them from other banks, well, they had an avenue to be able to construct these massive hotel and casino projects. And so by 1954, we really start seeing that Rat Pack era, you know, like the Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby kind of vibe. And 8 million tourists a year were visiting Las Vegas. In 20 years, we go from the old west and like, it's illegal to gamble and drink here. In 20 years we have 8 million visitors a year and Elvis Presley headlining at casinos. I mean that is a fast pace of change. That is very fast. I gotta tell you guys this though. This was something that I was like, I did not know that. In sort of this Vegas golden age, people would travel

to Las Vegas to watch the United States government set off atomic blasts. Outside of the city, I'm sure you know that a lot of our nuclear waste and nuclear facilities, they're in the desert of Nevada. In fact, 80% of Nevada is owned by the United States government. But for 12 years, every three weeks, for 12 years, the United States government would set off these atomic blasts and people would go watch them as a tourist attraction. Some of these blasts were so huge, they could be seen all the way to Montana. And Las Vegas authorities would print out calendars with the bomb testing dates for tourists. They'd be like, okay, December 17th, we have a bomb going off. Would you like to go see that? And casinos advertised rooms and they

would sell packages that would offer fantastic views of atomic explosions. Like this is a thing in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. I would like the weekend package with a view of the atomic bomb testing, please. That went on for 12 years. The particular Skyrim at the Desert Inn was a favorite for this for people who wanted to watch these atomic bomb tests because it had this very panoramic view of the Las Vegas horizon, Nevada desert, and people could be enjoying their leisurely meal while watching an atomic bomb test go off. That, you know, really iconic Las Vegas sign, you know exactly the one I'm talking about, the one that's really lit up, the Las Vegas in lights, was designed by a woman named Betty Willis for the Young Electric Sign

Company, which I think has a fantastic acronym, the YESCO. She designed that and that went up in 1959, the YESCO sign. So in the 1960s, bigger developers began building bigger and bigger projects. Howard Hughes, film tycoon, checked into the penthouse at the Desert Inn. He bought that hotel and a bunch of others, $300 million worth of real estate. And that really began transitioning Las Vegas from this sort of like, the mafia runs this town, into a corporate run city. Over the next 20 years, from the 1960s to the 1980s, you see this transition, this transformation from the origins of the Las Vegas Strip into what we know the Las Vegas Strip to be now, which is very much themed resorts, where we have resorts that are themed around things like Egypt and Paris and Venice

and New York. So they eliminated, cut down, raised is the word I'm looking for. You don't cut down a casino. You back it down. You raise it. Raised being R-A-Z-E-D. Raising the old casinos and building these new, extremely elaborate mega resorts like the Bellagio and like Caesars Palace, et cetera. So today, casinos and entertainment are still Las Vegas's major employer, right? Las Vegas has over 42 million visitors every year, and there are 232 casinos in Clark County, Nevada. Do you say Nevada or Nevada? I found that the region of the country you are from indicates how you will say it. Las Vegas, however, is no longer the gambling capital of the world. It was for a long time, but now it isn't. Now

that belongs to a Chinese territory in the South China Sea, and it is way bigger than Las Vegas, has way more lavish and decadent casinos and hotels, et cetera. I got to give you a couple more interesting facts about William Clark, the man who owned the railroads and then auctioned a piece of land off. And that land became part of Las Vegas's downtown. By the way, there's a difference between Las Vegas's downtown and the strip. Those are two different places. William Clark was one of America's richest men because of his investments in mining and railroads. When he died in 1925, he was worth $300 million. And that was in 1925 money. $300 million in 1925 money is worth approximately $4 billion today. That is insane. That is insane that one person

could generate that much wealth for themselves in the American West. So interesting that history is full of people attempting to consolidate wealth and power for themselves, right? Like, that is the story of humanity. And William Clark is no different. He accumulates all of this tremendous wealth for himself, but he still wants the power. So he decides, I'm going to run for the United States Senate. He gets elected. And the US Senate said, hard pass on you, William Clark. We refuse to seat you as a senator. We refuse. The reason that was revealed that they refused to seat William Clark was that he bribed members of the Montana state legislature in return for their votes. At that time, by the way, senators were chosen by state legislatures. They were not chosen by the voters directly.

And that changed in part because of William Clark. He was one of the reasons that we passed the 17th Amendment, which changed how senators were selected. He was one of the reasons, the man who Clark County, Nevada is named after. He was running for Senate in Montana, where he was from, bribed the state legislature, said, hey, if you elect me, I'll give you money. He gets to the United States Senate. They find out about the scheme and they refuse to seat him as a senator. He said, no worries, I'll run again. And he did. He ran again and in 1901 was seated as a senator, again. And he did. He ran again and in 1901 was seated as a senator, served one term as a senator.

Isn't that fascinating that the person who was very, very instrumental in setting up the foundation for what Las Vegas would become was one of America's richest men and attempted to bribe his way into power because he had the money and he was going to use the money to buy himself some power. And then we changed the constitution in part because of him. In fact, when one person criticized him for attempting to bribe the Montana legislature, his response was, I never bought a man who wasn't for sale. I never bought a man who wasn't for sale. What? I mean, that is just like abhorrent today, right? We know that bribery still happens in various places around the world, but the idea that somebody could just bribe their way into being a senator, most of us are like, what? That is ridiculous. Last thing before I let you go for today, you know who hated William Clark?

Was Mark Twain. Famous American icon, author Mark Twain. This is what Mark Twain had to say about him. He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag. He is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind, he is the most disgusting creature that the Republic has produced since Boss Tweed's

time. I mean, if that is not a verbal tongue lashing, he's the most disgusting creature. He belongs in the penitentiary with the ball and chain on his legs. He's a shame to the nation. Like zero love lost between William Clark and Mark Twain. Oh my goodness. There are so many characters like this in the American West.

This is part of what makes the American West fascinating. And I just found this evolution of Las Vegas becoming what it is so interesting. It was because there was underground water there that it was explored by the Spanish. And it had all of this vegetation and they thought, well, this might be a good spot. And then once William Clark decided to make it a maintenance stop for his railroads, that was what began attracting people to go there. It's all interrelated. I love it. Well, I hope you had a couple of brain tangle moments.

Hope you had a few little mind blown moments. The atomic explosion tourism thing, come on. That had to be a mind blown moment for you. All right, my friends, I will see you soon. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast

or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.