- 1905 - On May 15, 1905, the auction of lots
takes place under a mesquite tree where the Union Plaza stands
today, marking the birth date of Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Club opens as the Overland Park Hotel. It
becomes the Las Vegas Club in 1931. Mel Exber and Jackie Gaughan
have owned it since 1961.
- 1906 - The Golden Gate originally opens as
the Hotel Nevada in 1906 and becomes the Sal Sagev in 1931. In
1955, Golden Gate becomes a casino underneath the hotel and in
1974 Golden Gate assumes the entire operation and the property
becomes the Golden Gate.
- 1907 - The first telephone in Las Vegas is
installed at the office of Charles "Pop" Squires at the Hotel
Nevada, now the Golden Gate Hotel and Casino. The second
telephone is installed at his home four blocks east on Fremont.
- 1909 - Legal since 1869, gambling is
outlawed.
- 1911 - The first moving picture is shown at
the Overland Hotel where the Las Vegas Club is today. The
original building burns down that year, partly because there is
not enough water pressure in the hydrants. The disaster is a
major stimulus to the incorporation of the City of Las Vegas in
that year.
- 1912 - Where the Coin Castle stands today
was the site of the Northern Club, opened by Lon Groesbeck of
the Salt Lake City Brewing Company. He sold large glasses of
American Beauty beer for five cents. In 1920 he was the first
local casualty of prohibition when the district attorney found
23 pints of Old McBrayer in his room. He fled from the state to
avoid a three-month sentence and died a few months later.
- 1913 - A new street lighting system is
tested for the first time on Feb. 1. The Las Vegas Age reports,
"The installation of the street lights will mark a long forward
step in the life and business activity of the town and is the
subject for much self- congratulation for our people."
- 1916 - W.L. James, business manager and
secretary of the Nevada Film Company, selects the San Pedro, Los
Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad (now Union Pacific) property west
of downtown Las Vegas as the site of a studio for the production
of motion pictures released through World Film Corporation.
- 1919 - Capping a Fourth of July celebration
featuring a parade and a welcome home ceremony for servicemen
returning from World War I, a "street dance" complete with a
full orchestra is held on Fremont Street. The festivities also
feature a baseball game played at a brand new field constructed
on the railroad property west of downtown.
- 1920s - By the mid-1920s the Union Pacific
Depot, which was built in 1906, has five through passenger
trains running daily to L.A. In 1940 the old UP station is razed
to make way for a modern facility. In the late 1920s, the
building where the western part of the Pioneer Club is today was
operated as the Smokehouse. In 1930 it becomes the Las Vegas
Club and receives one of the first gambling licenses in Clark
County in 1931. In the late 1940s Kell Houssels, owner of the
Las Vegas Club, moves it across the street to its present
location.
- 1925 - Fremont Street is paved from Main
Street to Fifth Street.
- 1929 - The Bureau of Reclamation visits Las
Vegas to evaluate the city's potential as a housing center for
the Hoover Dam workers.
The first long distance phone call to Las Vegas is taken at
the Union Pacific dining room, fondly called the "Beanery" by
locals. It was located next to where the Union Plaza stands
today and was probably the town's most popular spot for social
gatherings.
Will Beckley, who operated a clothing store where the Pioneer
Club is today, expands his building to three stories.
- 1930s - In the mid 1930s, one of the city's
hottest night spots was located on Fremont Street. The Barrel
House Beer Garden had a full orchestra and dancing every night.
There was a hole cut into the wall connecting it to the State
Cafe, and patrons could order food through the hole. The State
Cafe was opened during prohibition, but you could get a coffee
pot full of whiskey if you knew the owner.
In the 1930s, the Elks, the Eagles and the Veterans of
Foreign Wars had their meeting halls on Fremont Street between
First Street and Second Streets. The Masons met on the second
floor of the First State Bank at First Street and Fremont
Street.
- 1931 - Gambling is legalized in Nevada. The
first of only six original gaming licenses in Clark County is
issued to Mayme V. Stocker at the Northern Club, 15 East Fremont
Street, where the Coin Castle stands today.
The first traffic light is installed in Las Vegas on Fremont
Street.
- 1932 - The oldest part of the Horseshoe
Hotel and Casino opens as the Apache Hotel, with 100 rooms and
the town's first elevator. It was a frequent stopover for
Hollywood celebrities such as Clark Gable during the years of
Boulder Dam construction. Before the Horseshoe opened, the
casino has also been known as the Apache Club, S.S. Rex and
Eldorado Club.
- 1933 - A Chinese restaurant opens called
the Silver Cafe. It is operated by S.M. Fong and is located just
north of Fremont Street and First Street. In 1955 the Fong
family opened their new restaurant, Fong's Garden, on East
Charleston.
- 1935 - Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates
Boulder Dam with a motorcade down Fremont Street.
The Las Vegas Elks Club institutes Helldorado Days, a
week-long celebration of Las Vegas' frontier heritage featuring
a parade on Fremont Street.
- 1940s - The emergence of neon begins to
transform a drab Fremont Street into "Glitter Gulch." In 1957,
the Southern Nevada Power Company reports a 57 percent increase
in energy usage -- much of it attributed to the proliferation of
colorful neon.
- 1941 - The El Rancho Vegas opens. The strip
and the beginning of big name entertainment emerges.
The El Cortez opens.
Infamous Block 16, one block north of Fremont Street on First
Street, becomes the town's red light district shortly after the
city was founded. The brothels are more or less officially
tolerated until the Army Air Force forces their closing with the
opening of the air base in 1941.
- 1942 - California gamblers Chuck Addison
and Tutor Scherer open the Pioneer Club.
- 1945 - Wilbur C. Clark opens the Monte
Carlo Club where the Northern Club used to be and the Coin
Castle is today. In the 1950s he went on to build and become
part owner of Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn Hotel and Casino.
- 1946 - The Golden Nugget opens. It is the
first structure designed from the ground up to be a casino.
Steve Wynn takes it over in 1972 and builds the first tower in
1977. The hotel now has 1,900 rooms.
The Eldorado Club is built.
- 1947 - A Texas gambler named
Benny Binion
comes to town and goes into partnership with Kell Houssels at
the Las Vegas Club. When Houssels moved the Las Vegas Club to
its present location, Binion took over the old premises and
opened the Westerner Club.
- 1950s - The pharmacy and hotel located for
many years on the northwest corner of First Street and Fremont
Street is torn down. The Silver Palace Casino opened on the same
site in 1956, but closed three years later.
- 1951 - Benny Binion purchases the Eldorado
Club and renames it the Horseshoe. It is currently owned and
operated by his son, Jack Binion.
Vegas Vic, the waving, winking cowboy who greets downtown
visitors with a hearty "Howdy, pardnuh! Welcome to Las Vegas!",
is erected on the Pioneer Club. The 48-foot tall sign quickly
becomes the most recognized symbol of Las Vegas.
The U.S. Government begins above-ground nuclear testing at a
proving ground 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Eager to
capitalize on the tests, downtown hotels serve "Atomic
Cocktails" at rooftop parties timed to coincide with the blasts,
and Las Vegas reaps worldwide publicity from photographs of
mushroom clouds rising in the distance above Fremont Street. The
radioactive festivities end in 1962, when the government orders
all testing done underground.
- 1952 - "The Las Vegas Story," starring
Victor Mature, Jane Russell and Vincent Price, marks its world
premiere in downtown Las Vegas.
- 1956 - Sam Levinson opens the first high
rise in Nevada, the Fremont Hotel/Casino.
- 1959 - Wayne Newton
opens at the Fremont
with his brother, Jerry, and a group called The Jets. Too young
to legally walk through the casino, the teenage entertainer and
future Las Vegas superstar spends his breaks between shows
having a soda at White Cross Drugs across the street from the
Fremont.
- 1960 - The downtown sign is erected on
I-15.
- 1964 - Lady Luck opens.
- 1965 - The Mint opens on the site of the
Apache Hotel.
- 1966 - Ben Goffstein opens the Four Queens,
named for his four daughters. Today it is under the ownership of
the Elsinore Corporation.
- 1969 - The Mint 400 takes place downtown.
- 1971 - A group of businessmen, including
J.K. Houssels, Jr., and Jackie Gaughan, open the Plaza. In 1986
Jackie Gaughan becomes chairman of the board.
- 1974 - Sam and Bill Boyd open the
California on New Year's Eve. It remains as one of the Boyd
Group's several properties.
The Golden Nugget provides an all-expenses paid trip to Las
Vegas for eight retirees who were arrested for playing penny
ante poker in a San Francisco residential hotel. The "Alexander
Hotel Eight" are treated to a day of dining and gambling at the
Golden Nugget.
- 1975 - The Four Queens places on public
display a collection of exact replicas of the Crown Jewels of
England. The display includes reproductions of the Orb of
England, the Imperial State Crown, and a knighting sword.
- 1978 - The city approves reconstruction
plans for Fremont Street from Main to Seventh streets, including
new curbs and storm drains, street lights, and gambling symbols
embedded in each of the eight intersections.
- 1980 - The Sundance opens as the highest
building downtown. In 1988 it becomes Fitzgeralds and is
currently owned by Don Barden.
- 1983 - Cashman Field opens.
- 1984 - The neon is removed from the Golden
Nugget and the spa tower is built.
- 1985 - The Boyd Group purchases the
California.
- 1986 - Hoping to revitalize the business
core of Las Vegas, the City Council forms a downtown
redevelopment agency.
- 1988 - Binion's Horseshoe purchases the
adjacent Mint Hotel from Del E. Webb Corp. for $27 million,
doubling the size of the Horseshoe's casino and adding a
24-story, 296-room high rise tower.
- 1989 - A parade honoring the memory of
slain civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is staged
on Fremont Street and other downtown thoroughfares.
- 1990 - Thousands of people line the streets
of downtown Las Vegas for a victory motorcade honoring NCAA
basketball champions, the University of Nevada - Las Vegas
Runnin' Rebels.
- 1991 - Two enlisted personnel from each
branch of the military serve as grand marshalls for the
Operation Desert Homecoming parade on Fremont Street honoring
veterans of the Persian Gulf war.
- 1992 - "Monday Night Jazz" marks its 10th
anniversary at the Four Queens. The shows are recorded and
syndicated to more than 140 public radio stations across the
country.
- 1994 - Ending a 60-year tradition, the
final Helldorado Days Parade is held on Fremont Street. Later in
the year, the street is permanently closed to vehicular traffic
to make way for construction of the Fremont Street Experience.
- 1995 - Las Vegas celebrates 90 years
downtown -- where it all began.
- Other Interesting Facts - Fremont Street
was named after John Charles Fremont, a 19th century general and
explorer who camped an expedition near the headwaters of the Las
Vegas Springs in 1844.
When the railroad sold lots in the new Las Vegas town site,
businesses could not sell liquor except on Block 16 and Block
17, between First Street and Third Street and between Ogden and
Stewart Avenue. But, hotels could sell liquor. Hence, the
saloons along Fremont Street, like the Northern and Las Vegas
Clubs, added a few rooms and called themselves hotels.
The northeast corner of First and Fremont streets was where
the First State Bank building was located until the Mint Hotel
expanded. The First State Bank was a direct ancestor to First
Interstate Bank. Clark County Sheriff Sam Gay used to sit in a
chair in front of the bank where he could see Block 16, the
gambling clubs along Fremont Street and the train station. "No
need to chase the bad guys," he said. "Everybody passes this
corner sooner or later."
The town's only indoor movie theater after the fire at the
Overland Hotel was the Majestic Theater on the south side of
Fremont Street, just west of Second Street. During the summer,
movies were shown at the Airdome outdoor theater on the
northeast corner of Third Street and Fremont Street. When it
rained, patrons would help the projectionist carry the equipment
back to the Majestic.
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