December 19th, 2007
Casino gambling was legalized in Nevada 75 years ago, on 19th March, 1931; an unprecedented world of entertainment that today has become an institution.
This landmark move turned a little known territory into one of the world’s major international tourist destinations, and the leading casino gambling destination. The 75 year old legislation was originally created to boost income to the region during the great depression, when most of the silver mining industry moved further south.
The early days of gambling in Nevada were nothing like the super casino resorts of the Strip today, with gaming mostly contained to small clubs and bars. As popularity grew and tourists started to come in, so did the casino industry.
Despite humble beginnings, after the Second World War came a sharp rise in casino building, mostly financed and connected with the mafia, a time when a casino license could be obtained by anyone with a registration fee. This in turn brought about tighter regulations to give the casinos a better reputation.
Without the casino industry in Nevada, the little state would never have become the famous destination it is today, one Las Vegas market research firm reportedly said, that without casino gaming, Nevada would be little more than a truck stop on the way to the West Coast.
The first casino to be constructed in Las Vegas was the El Rancho Vegas casino, back in 1941, just 10 years after the first licenses were issued. The El Rancho casino was quickly followed by more casinos, such as the Last Frontier casino and the Desert Inn casino, which introduced a new breed of casinos to the Strip.
These modern casinos had an edge, offering more than just casino games, with guest rooms and swimming pools as well as other recreations for casino guests.
In the post-war years, the Nevada casino industry saw a great boom with new casinos being built, including the Flamingo Casino on the Vegas Strip, which was the first to feature a Hollywood-style showroom, and giving birth to the institution of “Vegas Showgirls”.
Casinos like the Flamingo were run and financed by the organized crime underworld, and this led to calls for stricter licensing and regulations, a move from state legislators who wanted to clean up Nevada’s reputation.
Gaming regulations in the state of Nevada were in the hands of individual counties, until 1955, when the state began a Gaming Control Board and eight years later created the Gaming Commission to enforce regulations and show the nation that casinos in Nevada could be crime free.
Only after the Gaming Commission was created did Nevada make statutes to give the Gaming Control Board the authority to control licenses, and when Howard Hughes started buying up a lot of the casinos in 1966, a lot of the mob interests were wiped out, cleaning up the Nevada casino industry.
Growth continued to boom, especially after the opening of the Mirage in 1989, paving the way for a new trend of casino-resorts in an ever-growing industry that hopes to continue for at least another 75 years.
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