EDITOR’S NOTE: “Vegas Myths Busted” publishes every Monday, with a bonus Flashback Friday edition. Today’s accounting entry in our ongoing serial publication originally ran on Oct. 28, 2022.
The “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada” subscribe is a liar, not about the mythic part, but rather, well-nigh it welcoming anyone to Las Vegas. The ratify sits iv whole miles to the south of the metropolis of Las Vegas on a portion of Las Vegas Boulevard that takes motorists from Enterprise, Nev., into Paradise, Nev. Both are unincorporated William Clark County townships.
What the domain thinks of Las Vegas is not inwards Las Vegas. If your entire Las Vegas spark off consists of landing place at Harry Thomas Reid International Airport and staying and playing on the Strip, you’ll never formerly readiness foot inwards the city of Las Vegas.
OK. So can’t the sign on follow interpreted as welcoming motorists to the greater Las Vegas metropolitan area, then? No, that would live another lie. The Las Vegas Valley starts close Sloan, Nev., 11 miles southward of the sign.
What Gives?
Money. Also, a minuscule private that the owners of the original Las Vegas Strip hotels – and, for that matter, in all likelihood today’s – didn’t want visitors knowing: Paradise, Nev., is a position they made upwards to avoid paying taxes to the metropolis of Las Vegas and to skirt its stricter laws and regulations.
By 1950, the Pair-o-Dice Club, Thunderbird, El Rancho, Last Frontier, Flamingo, and Desert Inn had already gone upwardly on either face of Highway 91, as the main road from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles was so known. So, Las Vegas Mayor Ernie Cragin made a rude(a) move.
Since the country was no more yearner undeveloped Charles Joseph Clark County desert, and since its glimmering new cassino resorts diverted a growing amount of the traffic border for Las Vegas from LA, he attempted to wing it. Expanding the city’s tax radix at the clip would make funded his ambitious edifice schedule and paid knock down the city’s rising debt.
Property taxes interior the urban center limits were much greater than alfresco ($5 per $100 of valuation versus $3.48 per $100). Gambling and spirits license fees and taxes be more, too. This didn’t sit around easily with a grouping of cassino executives led past Gus Greenbaum, who mobster Meyer Lansky installed as the late Bugsy Siegel’s replacement inward bursting charge of the Flamingo in 1947. The radical lobbied William Clark County’s commissioners for township status. This would feature prevented any annexation without the commission’s approval.
Many net sources impeach the commission of accepting mafia bribes to make the township of Paradise, which is certainly possible, if non probable. The lobbyists also included Desert Inn “owner” Wilbur Clark, who was the frontman for Cleveland mobster Moe Dalitz. Former UNLV history prof Prince Eugene of Savoy Moehring’s 1989 book, “Resorts City inward the Sunbelt,” suggested the commissioners had other incentives to balloting to ground the township.
“Victory came on Dec. 8, 1950, when county commissioners, uneasy to block the expansion of Las Vegas spell enlarging their own assess and powerfulness bases, acceded to the petitioners’ request,” he wrote.
Paradise took its gens from the area’s previous name. Paradise Valley, known since at to the lowest degree 1910, featured an outstandingly richly water table, making the earth a paradise for farmers. At the clip of the township’s creation, it was single stat mi astray and quaternity miles long. type A month later, it was expanded to include all residential areas of Paradise Valley, growing to 54 foursquare miles.
Fool’s Paradise
Any doubts about the new township’s legitimacy were confirmed by the theme of its first off town board, which consisted only of Greenbaum, Dalitz, and executives from the El Rancho, Last Frontier, and Thunderbird. (Incidentally, 8 years after Paradise was formed, Greenbaum followed inward Siegel’s footsteps in another right smart past becoming the dupe of another never-solved gangland-style murder.)
Though now located inwards Paradise, the Highway 91 casino hotels all continued describing their location inward their marketing campaigns, on their postcards, and their properties as Las Vegas. And the megaresorts that replaced them stock-still get along to this day. And it’s gentle to realize why. Perpetuating this myth allows them to relish the international fame conveyed by a Las Vegas destination without paying a dime in urban center taxes.
Why is it Called Las Vegas Boulevard/the Las Vegas Strip?
When twist began on Interstate 15, which took o'er as the main route from LA to Salt Lake City, Highway 91’s epithet was changed to reverberate its usable modulation to a local road. Since it led to Las Vegas, it officially became Las Vegas Boulevard inward 1959.
The gambling casino hotel operators couldn’t follow happier since it made Paradise seem even to a greater extent similar Las Vegas to tourists.
The earliest known consultation to Highway 91 as “The Strip” appeared inward a March 1947 newsprint advertisement for a new gambling casino hotel called the Big Hat. “Direct from Ciro’s and Lindy’s,” it described the musical comedy move the Alperi Trio, “Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip to Las Vegas’ Strip.” (Lindy’s Steakhouse was torn down pat(p) long ago, Ciro’s became the Comedy Store in 1972.)
According to the widow of former L.A. cop Guy McAfee, her tardily husband had been using the nickname “The Strip” since shortly after he purchased the tiny Pair-O-Dice casino on the deserted route inwards 1939. It was a purely sarcastic comparison to the bustling Sunset Strip he left hand behind.
This story may live apocryphal, however, since in that location is no more tape of it until after McAfee’s Jan 1960 death. Regardless, inward 1959, formerly Interstate 15 was below construction, Highway 91 was decommissioned and renamed Las Vegas Boulevard to reverberate its functional modulation to a local road, and the Las Vegas Strip became common parlance.
That same year, Charles Joseph Clark County hired Western Electric Displays to further codify this myth. The accompany installed the Betty Willis-designed “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign.
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