VEGAS MYTHS RE-BUSTED: The Flamingo Was the First Strip Casino
EDITOR’S NOTE: “Vegas Myths Busted” publishes new entries every Monday, with a incentive Flashback Fri edition. Today’s accounting entry inwards our ongoing serial publication originally ran on March 31, 2023.
We’ve already busted the myth perpetuated past that shot inwards the 1991 film, “Bugsy,” in which Robert Penn Warren Beatty walked out into the devoid desert and had a vision. No, mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel didn’t create the Las Vegas Strip.
He didn’t yet make the Flamingo Hotel, which brings us to the myth at hand. The real story of the first casino to lodge in the Strip is known to only if a few nonhistorians. And it’s far meliorate than the one inward “Bugsy.”
The Las Vegas Strip, as UNLV story professor Michael William Green told Casino.org, “has a founding mother, not a founding father.”
A whopping iv casinos and 2 fully fledged resorts vanquish the Flamingo to Highway 91, as the briny route from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles was known inward 1946. The first of all was opened a total 15 years earlier past Alice Morris, whose nickname, “Ma,” was stunningly prescient.
The Real Pecking Order
“Ma” Esther Hobart McQuigg Slack Morris opened the Red Rooster, non to be disjointed with the Las Vegas swingers gild operating under that identify since the 1980s, on Nov. 26, 1930, on 12 acres where the N logic gate of The Mirage now stands. At first, it was a nightclub featuring dance marathons, live all-girl bands, and dining. type A lily-livered dinner party would place you back up $1.
There was no gambling yet, at least non of the effectual variety. As unknown as this sounds, Las Vegas had outlawed it since Sept. 30, 1910.
Amid the lesson rectify of the Progressive Era of the too soon 20th century, Battle Born State prohibited to the highest degree forms of gambling,” Green River explained. “It didn’t get effectual once more until Governor Fred Balzar signed Assembly Bill 98 on March 19, 1931.”
Anxious to exploit the young revenue stream, but having no have with gambling, Gouverneur Morris did what the owners of many other Las Vegas clubs did at the time: she enlisted the advice of a play expert. And who were the play experts back up then?
Mob Rules
Morris “Goldie” Goldsworth was lured to Las Vegas past the promise of illegal gaming profits inward an untapped market. type A rising player inward the LA play racquet at the time, he would follow found beaten to decease by a hammering inward the backwards sit down of his gondola on Oct. 16, 1958. The LA coroner called the gunshot wounds to his caput “only superficial.” He was 52.
When he was noneffervescent breathing, Goldie in agreement(p) to mark upwardly and bleed Morris’ gambling functioning in exchange for an undocumented cut of meat of the profits. He applied for a modest permission — for a sap tabularise and terzetto slot machines — and on Apr 1, 1931, the Red River Rooster became the world-class Joe Clark County establishment on Highway 91 to have a gaming licence below the unexampled law.
The Red River Rooster also became the 1st Las Vegas Strip cassino to lose its gaming permit because serving intoxicant was another thing that was, surprisingly, against the law of nature at the time. It would remain so across the US until the repeal of Prohibition on Dec. 5, 1933.
Alcohol had been usable at the Red River Rooster since the twenty-four hour period it opened. In Feb 1931, Prohibition agents yet dropped in to military issue Robert Morris a warning. And she complied, temporarily. But on May 18, 1931, the Red Rooster received a secondly see from the feds that wasn’t so friendly. They arrested Morris and her husband, who were found guilty, granted probation, and fined $500.
Goldie wasn’t arrested during the raid. But when he applied to renew the Red Rooster’s gaming permission on July 7, 1931, it was denied due to the previous booze violation.
Other Pre-Flamingo Strip Casinos
Like the Red River Rooster, the Pair O’ Dice opened as a nightclub and eatery inward 1930, serving alcohol below the table. Unlike the Red River Rooster, however, owners Frank and Angelina Detra ne'er got busted. They also applied for a gaming license, but didn’t invite single until May 1931, a month after the Red River Rooster was issued theirs.
The El Rancho Vegas opened inward Apr 1941. It had the largest gambling casino on Highway 91, with 70 one-armed bandit machines and quaternary tabularize games. It also had a swim pool and a 63-room hotel, so it can truly live called the for the first time resort on the Las Vegas Strip. As far as casinos go, however, it was No. 3.
In 1941, the Pair O’ Dice was sold and incorporated into the Hotel Last Frontier. Its 1942 grand opening made it the 4th functionary cassino on the Strip and the second resort.
The Flamingo Hotel didn’t opened until Dec. 26, 1946, as the hereafter Las Vegas Strip’s 5th casino and third resort.
Red Rooster Crows On
The Red River Rooster’s timeline continued after losing its gambling casino license. In 1933, Kenneth Bancroft Clark County gave Morris’s byplay a young living past granting it a trip the light fantastic toe hall license. After Prohibition was repealed later that year, the county followed upward with a beer-only spirits license. Though the Red Rooster suffered a firing inward July 1933, Morris rebuilt and reopened it on Dec 30 of that same year. It remained popular end-to-end World War II.
In 1947, Esther Hobart McQuigg Slack Morris sold the Red Rooster to former music hall asterisk Grace Hayes. By then, a motel, the Sans Souci (French for without care), had been added to the property. In 1962, it would live demolished to create The Castaways.
Like so many former vaudevillians, Hayes was unable to transition to big-screen stardom. The vocalizer and actress had managed to nab just ii leading roles, playing a variation of herself inwards 1936’s “Maid for a Day” and in 1941’s “Zis Boom Bah.”
So, Hayes enacted her Plan B. Exploiting her fading figure recognition, she opened the Grace Hayes Sir Oliver Lodge in Sherman Oaks, Calif., inward 1938.
After deciding to relocate both herself and her lodge to Las Vegas, she paid Esther Hobart McQuigg Slack Morris $15K for the Red River Rooster and the 12 acres it sat on, renaming the lodge after herself and having a spread domiciliate built in arrears it as her residence.
The bludgeon remained successful with Rutherford Birchard Hayes at the helm, attracting many of the town’s betimes movers and shakers. In a 1981 interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hayes estimated that Catherine Howard Howard Robard Hughes was inward the place at to the lowest degree leash times a week.
“I don’t experience what I served him,” Rutherford Birchard Hayes told the newspaper. “I live i served him a drink. I mixed a drink. He didn’t guardianship what it was. He never drank it, and he never paid me for a drunkenness inwards his life.”
Growing tired of operating a club, Helen Hayes leased it to others. When Willie Martello, meliorate known for operating houses of gambling and prostitution inwards Searchlight, Nev., took o'er in 1949, he changed its identify to Willie Martello’s Red River Rooster. That’s because its regulars ne'er stopped up(p) referring to the gild by its former name.
After Martello, the gild operated under a revolving door of different owners and young names. These included the Hi-Ho Club, The Patio, The Rendezvous, and finally, the Grace Rutherford B. Hayes Sir Oliver Lodge again. The club closed in(p) in 1957 and was torn pile in 1959 past Standard Oil (which became Mobil Oil in 1966). President Hayes had leased the set ashore to the society to opened a gaseous state station.
Hayes Stays
Hayes continued living in the ranch house on her property. It eventually made history as the in conclusion remaining buck private home on the Strip. Her son and daughter-in-law united her inward Vegas, entertainers Simon Peter Jenny Lind Helen Hayes and The Virgin Healy, who were actively mired in the community.
In 1987, Steve Wynn paid President Hayes $2M for her domiciliate and the Mobil post where the Red River Rooster at one time stood. As section of the deal, she lived come out her last days inward a overgenerous rooms at Wynn’s Golden Nugget holiday resort downtown. Ill wellness forced Rutherford Birchard Hayes to go in the Las Vegas Convalescent Center, where she died at eld 93 inwards 1989. That’s the same twelvemonth Wynn opened The Mirage on the land site of her former home.
On almost the exact blot where the Red River Rooster once stood, Wynn built The Mirage’s to the highest degree famous public attraction. Sometime inwards 2024, his false volcano is lot to be dismantled by Hard John Rock International, which purchased The Mirage utmost year for $1.1B. The resort’s young possessor intends to erect a 36-story guitar-shaped hotel tower inwards its place.
Since intelligence of the volcano’s impending demolition broke, Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers feature taken to societal media to complain about Las Vegas’ lack of prize for its history. What’s laughable is that they cogitate the volcano is the to the highest degree historical thing that erst occupied this site.
When you for the first time ascertain that guitar tower climbing toward the sky, cognize it is rising from the ashes of Las Vegas history.
“Remember the pioneers who came first,” Green River said, “in this case, Grace Rutherford Birchard Hayes and her predecessor, Alice Morris, the founding fuss of the Las Vegas Strip.”
Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Mon on Casino.org. Visit VegasMythsBusted.com to read previously busted Vegas myths. Got a proposition for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.