Nobody vetted Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel before Nevada let him build and run a casino on the Strip — because for the first eighteen years after the state legalized wide-open gambling, nobody in state government had the legal authority to vet anyone. The licensing gap that let Siegel’s money and associates walk into the Flamingo unchecked… Continue reading Nevada Had No Way to Vet Casino Owners Until 1949. Bugsy Siegel Opened the Flamingo Three Years Before That.

Federal engineers didn’t just build a dam in the Nevada desert in the early 1930s — they built and ran an entire town, with the legal authority to decide who could live inside its gates. That authority kept Black workers out of Boulder City entirely, funneling them instead into West Las Vegas, the neighborhood that… Continue reading Nevada Ran Boulder City as a Federal Reservation for 29 Years. It Handed Back the Land in 1960.

Las Vegas spent parts of two decades fighting in federal court over a basic question: whether children could be assigned to schools strictly by neighborhood when the neighborhoods themselves were segregated by design. The ruling that resulted upended Clark County’s elementary schools for twenty years — and the neighborhood-based system that returned after it expired… Continue reading Black Parents Sued to Desegregate Las Vegas Schools in 1968. The Sixth Grade Center Plan Lasted 20 Years.

A single hiring decision made seven decades ago still shapes who works Las Vegas’s casino floors today. In 1954, the union representing the Strip’s hospitality workers began deliberately recruiting outside Nevada to grow its ranks — a strategy that helped build the labor bloc that, by 2024, could claim every major resort on the Strip… Continue reading In 1954, the Culinary Union Started Recruiting Workers From the Deep South. It Now Represents Every Casino on the Strip.

Nevada’s gambling regulators don’t just police cheating at the tables — they decide who is allowed to own a casino at all. The two-agency system that makes that call was built specifically to screen organized crime out of the business, and seven decades later it is still the gate every ownership change in the state… Continue reading Nevada Built a Two-Tier Gambling Regulator in 1955 and 1959. It Just Vetted Three of Primm’s Oldest Casinos.

For nearly a century, the rising waters of Lake Mead kept an entire Nevada town buried beneath the Colorado River. Now, as the reservoir sinks into territory it has never occupied before, that town’s foundations are surfacing above the waterline — a physical marker of how far the river system has fallen, and how much… Continue reading St. Thomas, Nevada, Went Underwater in 1938. Lake Mead’s Record Low Is Bringing It Back.

Prospectors found a gypsum deposit on a hill southwest of Las Vegas in 1905. A century of mining followed, then two decades of federal litigation over what would replace it. Clark County’s own zoning records now say the answer is houses: In July 2024, the county approved redesignating roughly 2,010 acres of that same hill… Continue reading Prospectors Found Gypsum on Blue Diamond Hill in 1905. Clark County Just Approved Homes on the Same 2,010 Acres.