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 Friday, 16 May 2008 |
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Las Vegas: Fun Spot You Can Bet On |
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Written by David Ellis
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Monday, 26 February 2007 |
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WHEN Nevada outlawed gambling in October 1910, the editor of one newspaper that had championed the cause, chortled: “Stilled forever is the click of the roulette wheel, the rattle of the dice and the swish of the cards.”
Unfortunately his soothsaying fell somewhat short of the mark: ‘forever’ lasted just two weeks – the time it took to move the tables from defunct gaming halls to illegal bars in cellars with reinforced steel doors, and to dig escape-tunnels in the event of a raid by the police or tax man.
But gambling den operators need not have bothered. For the next 21 years they flourished, the police seldom carrying out the law, and the State doing nothing to goad them into action.
Then in 1931 the local legislature unexpectedly once again legalised gambling – with a major proviso: its Gambling Bill stipulated that a “substantial portion” of all taxes raised from gambling in Nevada go directly to the State’s education system.
Today, over a third of Nevada’s total budget is still spent on education, most of it from taxes on the staggering AU$9.35-billion raked-in annually by Nevada’s casinos.
To gamblers, Nevada means Las Vegas – a desert metropolis devoted entirely to the vagaries of Lady Luck, with hotels and resorts that range from the palatial to the kitsch in terms of replica Niagara Falls, faux castles, scaled-down Eiffel Towers, pseudo palaces and full-time circuses. And often free drinks and meals for the punters.
But it was not only the lawful who founded Las Vegas: one of its earliest ‘investors’ was the Mafia mobster, Benny “Bugsy” Siegel who, with backing from the so-called Chicago Mob, opened a hotel-casino on what is now the famous Las Vegas Strip on Boxing Day 1946.
He named it The Flamingo after the nickname of his leggy showgirl lover, Virginia Hill – a gangland drinking-mate of Al Capone, Frank Nitti and Joe Adonis.
The Flamingo Hotel Casino wasn’t the goldmine Bugsy hoped, and just six months after it opened, Bugsy Siegel was machine-gunned by the Chicago Mob who believed he – or worse, his girlfriend – were ripping off the profits.
The ‘hit’ occurred in Virgina Hill’s Los Angeles mansion (once owned by Rudolf Valentino,) and strangely soon after The Flamingo herself had fled without notice to Paris…
Many believe Las Vegas was created in the desert purely to support gambling. They’re wrong. It’s history goes back to 1829 when 60 Mexican traders trekking the dehydrating ‘Spanish Trail’ to Los Angeles, detoured to see if they could find a quicker route.
They stumbled upon “an oasis-like valley awash with abundant spring water and shaded by lush, cool palms.” Within a few years, the original trail had been abandoned and the oasis was dubbed “Las Vegas,” Spanish for “The Meadows.”
Mormon missionaries built a fort there and grew fruit and vegetables for themselves and travellers, but abandoned it in 1858 because of constant raids by the Indian tribes they were attempting to “bring civilisation to.”
The little oasis slumbered until 1890 when it was chosen as a depot and watering hole for a railroad linking America’s east with the Wild West: gambling saloons and stores, boarding houses and bordellos inevitably followed, and in 1905 the Town of Las Vegas was officially Gazetted – with eager settlers staking-out half-hectare blocks for just US$1.25 each.
Today Las Vegas has 130,000 hotel rooms, some of the world’s best showrooms cramped-in jeek-by-jowl with equally spectacular cabarets, and attracts 38.5-million visitors a year who part with their AU$9.35-billion in search of Lady Luck.
And thanks to them, the city’s 536,000 permanent Las Vegans don’t have to worry about State taxes – because with gambling’s windfalls, there aren’t any.
Visit Las Vegas Web Site: www.visitlasvegas.com |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 21 March 2007 )
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