Las Vegas Strip (in red) runs through Winchester, Paradise

1950-Today

When people are on the Las Vegas Strip, they’re really in Paradise — the town, that is.

In 1950, a rumor surfaced that the City of Las Vegas’ boundaries would be expanded to include the then multimillion-dollar luxury resort area on South Las Vegas Boulevard. Disliking the idea, the proprietors of the hotel-casinos there collectively strategized to get the area in which their properties sat deemed an unincorporated town. That status would prevent the city from annexing it without the owners’ unanimous approval.

Money was the primary reason the Strip businesses opposed incorporation into Vegas. Costs — gambling and liquor license fees and taxes, for instance — within the city were higher than outside, specifically a tax rate of $5 per hundred dollars’ valuation versus $3.48.

In December the Clark County commissioners approved designation of a one-mile wide and four-mile long stretch as the unincorporated town of Paradise, said to be named after the Pair-O-Dice, a club whose property eventually became the Last Frontier.

These men comprised the newly formed, required town board:

• Gus Greenbaum / Flamingo: manager and associate of Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (Greenbaum was Paradise’s board chairman)

• William J. Moore, Jr. / Last Frontier: developer, executive director and vice president

• Wilbur Clark / Desert Inn: front man for Cleveland mobster Moe Dalitz, the principal owner

• Marion Hicks / Thunderbird: architect and manager

• Beldon Katleman / El Rancho Vegas: owner

A major change for the properties in the new township was the lack of access to city services, including sewage disposal and fire protection services. Also, half of all gambling fees collected in Paradise had to be spent on public improvements within the town as opposed to throughout the county, as was the case before.

“What is good for the valley is good for the Strip. We hope this move will bring you better roads, better schools and better everything,” Greenbaum said at a town meeting.

In early 1951, property owners in Paradise Valley, the southern part of the Las Vegas Valley, sought and received approval to annex their unattached land to the newly established Paradise. This expanded the area to 54 square miles.

Paradise Divided

Later, out of the northern portion of Paradise, a second township was created, 7.5 square miles, that became known as Town A. The larger, remaining portion of the original unincorporated Paradise became Town B.

Eventually Towns A and B received official names.

In 1953, Town A was named Winchester. At the time, it encompassed the Sahara, El Rancho Vegas and Thunderbird hotel-casinos on the Strip’s northern end, as well as Last Frontier Village, the Las Vegas Park Race Track, numerous motels and some private homes. The Town A residents liked the name Winchester for its Western flavor and chose it over other suggested monikers, including McCarran, Sunset Heights, Empire, Silverado, Tiffany and Valhalla.

“In addition to getting a new name, the town figures to be one of the richest per capita in the world, since it covers practically all of the multi-million-dollar resort hotel industry, plus several costly motels and the expectation that another $20 million in new hotels will be erected in the near future,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (Oct. 8, 1953).

Town B recaptured the original name, Paradise. Much larger in land size, it included the Desert Inn, Sands and Flamingo hotel-casinos on the Strip’s southern end and the Paradise Valley ranch area.

Attempt At Unification

In 1975, Governor Mike O’Callaghan signed Senate Bill 601, which would’ve doubled the size of Las Vegas by expanding its boundaries to include the Strip (Winchester and Paradise), Sunrise Manor and East Las Vegas — all unincorporated towns. The goal was to consolidate the various city and county governments and services.

However, before the change could be carried out, the Nevada Supreme Court, in June 1976, ruled that the legislation was unconstitutional for various reasons. One was because the law was passed during a special session, which is illegal per the Nevada Revised Statutes.

“I think that ends it for good,” said Senator James Gibson (D-Henderson), who’d introduced the bill. “It will probably kill [a] merger for quite a while in the future” (Las Vegas Sun, June 8, 1976).

Though relatively unknown except to locals, Paradise and Winchester still exist today, independent of Las Vegas.

Sources

The article, “Las Vegas Gamblers Arming in Control Battle,” ran on the front page of a Los Angeles newspaper in the third week of December, to the chagrin of Nevada gambling regulators, casino owners, officers of the law and other industry representatives.

The story reported that in the new iteration of Sin City:

• Casino owners (gamblers) were readying to fight for control of gambling there
• Many gamblers were carrying weapons and had armed bodyguards
• Men (presumably hired by the gamblers) were cruising competing casinos’ parking lots, trying to persuade guests to play at their clubs instead
• Ladies planted in cocktail lounges were directing visitors to specific casinos
• Although unreported, several physical beatings took place in gamblers’ inner circles
• One casino owner left the state because his life had been threatened*
• Fixers, dispatched by East Coast Mafia heads, were en route to negotiate a truce

Landscape At The Time

In the ’40s, downtown Las Vegas transformed when a handful of its gambling properties changed owners and names. The 1949, or post-war, Fremont Street was home to the:

Las Vegas Club (1930)
Boulder Club (1931)
Frontier Club (1935)
El Cortez Hotel (1941)
Western Club (1941)
Pioneer Club (1942)
Santa Anita Turf Bar (1943)
Monte Carlo (1945)
Golden Nugget (1946)
Club Savoy (1946)
El Dorado Club (1947)

Downtown Las Vegas in early 1950s

Also in that decade, the city saw the start of what would become the Las Vegas Strip, with the debut of this quartet of hotel-casinos:

El Rancho Vegas (1941)
Last Frontier (1942)
Flamingo (1946)
Thunderbird (1948)

Still fresh in the minds of those in the gambling world was the execution two years earlier, in 1947, of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, violent mobster (Genovese crime family associate) and Meyer Lansky pal. Siegel had overseen (badly) the building of the Flamingo in Vegas, and had run the business until his murder.

In mid-December 1949, the Flamingo double-crossed Club Savoy, which was across the street, with a play that involved a cheating gambling stunt. The incident was extensively reported in the papers when Savoy’s owner refused to pay the Flamingo its winnings. It was negative publicity that gambling regulators and state officials disliked.

Also around the time, several casinos agreed to stop some of their blatant efforts to poach customers from other gambling properties. They’d used people on megaphones and “circus-type banners” to inform passersby that their slot machines had better payouts than their competitors’.

The L.A. newspaper article didn’t specify which gambling factions supposedly were fighting one another. Perhaps it was a Strip vs. downtown beef.

Similar, Widespread Reaction

The overarching response to the newspaper report from the big names in and associated with the Vegas gambling industry was denial: A turf war? What turf war? Calling the article’s contents hogwash, they deduced it merely was an attempt to hurt Nevada’s booming sector at a time it would feel it the most, the New Year’s Day weekend.

Here are some of the individuals who publicly weighed in and their comments. (All quotes are from the Nevada State Journal, Dec. 29, 1949.)

Gus Greenbaum, mobster, Meyer Lansky lieutenant and Flamingo hotel-casino president:

“The stories to that effect are fabricated entirely,” he said, specifically referring to an impending war for control. “No guns are being carried on any hotel or club property except by authorized personnel.”

Spokesman for the Nevada Tax Commission, the then gambling regulation agency:

Any impending warfare over gambling control “is news to us.”

Spokesman for the downtown casinos, who asked to remain anonymous:

“Relations between the gambling clubs and the casinos are more harmonious than ever. We think the story was carried mainly to counteract favorable publicity given our gaming recently by another Los Angeles newspaper. This whole business has been dreamed up by some eager newspaper correspondent.”

William J. Moore, Jr., Hotel Last Frontier executive vice president and tax commission member:

He wasn’t aware of any threats on the gambling scene, he said. In fact, the various gamblers have gotten along well in recent months and hold weekly meetings to hash out any issues. The story was “a deliberate attempt to keep California dollars from coming into the state, appearing as it did on the eve of the biggest weekend in the history of gambling in Las Vegas.” He added Vegas gamblers aren’t using “steerers,” or “persons corresponding roughly to ‘B’ girls in cocktail lounges who direct visitors to a certain casino,” which the state prohibits.

Archie Wells, City of Las Vegas acting police chief:

He didn’t know about any alleged beatings of certain gambling figures, he said. “We checked thoroughly and found no violence of any kind — reported or otherwise.” His department found no evidence the reports perhaps stemmed from possible attempts at revenge by Club Savoy.

Glen Jones, Clark County sheriff:

“We’ve received the utmost cooperation from all gambling operators.” He didn’t know of any gambler who was carrying a gun openly other than the special officers with deputy sheriff status in the clubs.

Informal Peace Summit

After the story appeared, the city’s casino and gambling club owners quickly convened to address its allegations.

They must’ve come to a mutually satisfactory resolution, if in fact a battle for gambling control had been underway or imminent, as no lives were taken . . . at least that we know of.

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* One gambler, Beldon “Jake” Katleman, co-owner of the El Rancho Vegas, had traveled to the Middle East recently but was back in town at the time the newspaper article was published, the Nevada State Journal noted.

Sources