Nevada’s Tax Commission tried to suspend the Thunderbird Hotel’s gambling licenses in 1955 over loans traced to Meyer Lansky’s brother. The Nevada Supreme Court threw out the suspension two years later, ruling the commission hadn’t proven its case under its own procedures — a defeat that exposed exactly the enforcement gap Nevada’s modern licensing system… Continue reading Nevada’s Tax Commission Tried to Suspend the Thunderbird’s Gambling Licenses Over Hidden Mob Loans in 1955. The Nevada Supreme Court Threw Out the Suspension in 1957.

Six Companies, the contractor group that built Hoover Dam, employed no more than about 30 Black workers on the entire project and barred all of them from living in Boulder City, the federal town built to house its workforce. Ninety years later, Boulder City is still less than 1% Black, according to the U.S. Census… Continue reading Six Companies Barred Black Workers From Living in Boulder City During Hoover Dam’s Construction. The City Is Still Less Than 1% Black Today.

The Las Vegas Wash was a dry desert channel that ran a few days a year until the valley’s sewage changed that. Seventy years later, the same return flow that once tore the Wash’s banks apart is why Southern Nevada can draw more water from Lake Mead than its tiny legal share would otherwise allow.… Continue reading Urban Wastewater Turned the Las Vegas Wash Into a Year-Round Stream in 1955. Nevada Still Uses Those Return Flows to Stretch Its Smallest-in-the-Basin Water Share.

Las Vegas Boulevard did not start as a skyline. It started as a 57-acre dude ranch outside the city limits, built by a Los Angeles hotelman betting that motorists driving in on Highway 91 would stop before they reached downtown’s card rooms. A fire took the resort down in under an hour in 1960, and… Continue reading El Rancho Vegas Opened as the Strip’s First Resort on April 3, 1941. A Fire Gutted It on June 17, 1960, and It Never Came Back the Same Size.

Washington kept its 1874 promise to the Agai Dicutta people down to the acre. It never made the same promise to the lake that promise was built around, and the lake has been paying for it ever since. The land around Walker Lake, then part of the Utah Territory, was set aside for “Indian purposes”… Continue reading President Grant Set Aside the Walker River Reservation by Executive Order on March 19, 1874. Upstream Irrigation Has Dropped the Lake Inside It 150 Feet Since 1882.

A single bill, passed in the final weeks of the 1931 Legislature with almost no opposition, turned every county in Nevada into licensed gambling territory overnight. The state did not ask who was actually running the games for another 24 years — and the regulatory machine built to close that gap is the same one… Continue reading Nevada Legalized Gambling in a Single Day in 1931. It Took the State 24 Years to Ask Who Was Running the Games.