Benny Binion didn’t invent the World Series of Poker. He bought it from a Reno casino owner, moved it downtown and set a $10,000 buy-in that still defines the tournament’s Main Event today, 55 years after his family lost the casino that hosted it. Lester Benjamin “Benny” Binion was born near Dallas-Fort Worth on Nov.… Continue reading Benny Binion Bought the Rights to a Reno Poker Tournament in 1970 and Moved It to His Horseshoe Club. Caesars Entertainment Now Runs the $10,000 Buy-In He Set as a Digital Operations Line.

The federal government authorized Nevada’s first pipeline from Lake Mead in 1965, when forecasters expected it to cover Las Vegas’s water needs through 1990. Population growth blew past that forecast within a decade, and today Nevada’s entire Colorado River supply still moves through the system built in response, even as Washington orders the state to… Continue reading President Johnson Signed Nevada’s First Colorado River Pipeline Into Law on Oct. 22, 1965. The State Is Still Cutting Back on the Same Water It Was Built to Deliver.

A ranch at the base of the Spring Mountains survived a diamond heist, Howard Hughes’s brief ownership and a developer’s plan to fill it with 2,000 residents before Nevada folded it into its state park system in 1973. Two miles away, on another piece of the same mountain range bordering Red Rock Canyon, a different… Continue reading Developers Nearly Turned Spring Mountain Ranch Into a 2,000-Person Subdivision in 1972. Nevada Made It a State Park the Next Year Instead.

Herman Moody patrolled Las Vegas for 31 years and trained the Black officers who came after him, yet he retired in the same rank he started in. Nearly a half-century later, the department he helped integrate still employs Black officers at a lower share than Clark County’s Black population — a gap that traces back… Continue reading The Old Las Vegas Police Department Hired Herman Moody in 1946 and Confined Him to Black Neighborhoods. He Retired in 1977 as Its Most Senior Officer, Never Promoted in Rank.

Local 720 today represents thousands of the technicians who build and run Las Vegas Strip production. Few of its current members could say that for nearly three years in the 2000s, the union had no leadership of its own choosing — run instead by trustees answering first to its international parent and then to a… Continue reading IATSE Chartered Las Vegas Stagehands as Local 720 in 1939. The International Union Revoked That Charter in 2002 and Ran the Local Through a Federal Trustee for Nearly Three Years.

Nevada’s longest fight over who controls public land did not start with a monument. It started with unpaid grazing fees and a rancher who ignored a federal court order for 18 years — and the legal question his case raised about the government’s enforcement power was never actually decided. The Bureau of Land Management canceled… Continue reading A Federal Judge Permanently Barred Grazing on the Bunkerville Allotment in 1998. President Obama Named the Same Land Gold Butte National Monument in 2016.

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.