One of the most influential was Guy McAfee, an LA cop on the vice squad who fled California to escape prosecution for running gambling and prostitution rings on the side.Īnother big turning point came in 1941, when the first combined hotel-casino, El Rancho Vegas, opened on a stretch of Highway 91 that McAfee later nicknamed “the Strip.” The El Rancho Vegas resort was important because it helped make gambling “something you could do on a vacation,” says David G. Starting in 1938, these people began to move to Las Vegas as a new mayor in Los Angeles cracked down on illegal gambling. For that, it needed people with experience running gambling businesses. Still, an influx of gamblers every two weeks wasn’t enough to make Las Vegas a gambling mecca. During World War II, the opening of a magnesium plant in nearby Henderson, Nevada also brought in a large population of workers looking for weekend recreation. “One of the sayings was that the town got very exciting for a couple of days a month,” says Michael Green, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
On pay day, these workers would travel the roughly 25 miles to Las Vegas to enjoy gambling on Fremont Street, which was the downtown hub of Vegas before the Strip. Nevada’s legalization of gambling in 1931 coincided with the beginning of construction on the Hoover Dam, which brought thousands of workers to Boulder City.
