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The History of Las Vegas · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just a trio
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: of root and tutin bandits on stuff you should know.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Let's just get better and better.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Well, I wanted to nod to Las Vegas's Old West
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: I guess history. So, yeah, you know there were bandits there.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: They used words like root and tutin. I presume, of
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: course they did. So it was that propoem in my take.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: I agree, thanks man, I appreciate the support.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: So early history of Las Vegas, the earliest we're starting
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: out and uh, you know with indigenous tribes, and we're
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: gonna work our way forward to what like the eighties, sure, seventies, No,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: maybe even.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: The early nineties, oh, late eighties, early nineties, the nineteen
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: nineties even, oh wow, all right, so we are going
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: to start at the beginning. There seems to have been
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: evidence of habitation. I saw according to PBS that dates
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: to fifteen thousand years ago, not too shabby. That's even
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: pre Clovis. There's I've also seen like about ten thousand
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: years and then the thing that drew people to Las
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Vegas a spring, if you can believe it, that actually
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: turned the area around Las Vegas as we know it
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: now into kind of a relatively verdant area in a
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: desert that didn't erupt until eight thousand years ago. So
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: there might have been people hanging out in like rock
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: dwellings and caves around there here or there, but it
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: wasn't like a place you wanted to stay until that
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: spring came up.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like Tiktook was wandering around saying, does anyone know
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: where Carrot Top is playing?
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: That's right, man, that guy has had a residency for
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: ten years now?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Is he in Vegas? I was kind of kidding.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Oh no, he's had a residency for ten years now.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, good for him.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, it might be more than that.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: It might be eight thousand years that he's been there.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: So we did promise talk of and I guess that's
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: about where we're going to pick up in with our story.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Sure, with the new Wuvi people, which are part of
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the Southern Paiute Native American tribe who were kind of
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: all over the place down there southern California, southern Nevada,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: southern Utah, northern Arizona kind of in that little strip, yes,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and that they were there in Las Vegas, like you said,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: largely because there was a spring there.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Right, And they were hunters and gatherers, and they were
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: known for their really well crafted dice.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: We're just going to have those all over the place
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: For sure. So they lived there among other people too,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: and again they were hunter gatherers, so they I don't
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: believe they were considered permanent inhabitants of the area, but
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: they definitely lived around there, So I guess it wasn't
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: until the eighteen twenties. No, even after that. It wasn't
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: until the eighteen fifties that the area we know of
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: as Las Vegas was actually first permanently settled, and even
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: then it was temporary. If that's not enough of a
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: mind boggler.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: For you, well, are we gonna spoil who that is
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: by two minutes?
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Yes? I think we should, because I don't want people
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: to have to wait for that.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, who is it?
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: The Mormons?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: That's right, but pre Mormon, when it was just a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: little spring, it did become known. It was part of
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Mexico at the time, of course, and it became known
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: as Las Vegas de Quintana the Meadows in Spanish. And
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty nine is when it first sort of
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: started just being a thing at all, because it was
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: a stop on what was called the Old Spanish Trail,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: which was a trade route between Las Vegas and Los Angeles,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: with the stop in Utah on the way.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, the reason why you would stop there
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: is because there's running water there. That's a rarity in
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: the area. So that alone drew people from time immemorial.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: And I think around the eighteen forty is a guy
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: named John C. Fremont showed up or Fremont, and he
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: was a surveyor, but he was like a shadester surveyor.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: He was sent by the United States to go see
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: what the land looked like out there and maybe survey
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: for the United States. But do it surreptitiously, because again,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: all of this area belongs to Mexico. We've just been
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: thinking about maybe taking it over.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I want to correct myself real quick. It
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: does the Old Spanish Trail to connect Vegas to La
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: but it started in Santa Fe. So we want to
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: sell them short.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Oh no, not at all.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: We love our Santa.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Fans, Santa fe Inian nights in.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: The night ganders right. So the US of Mexico went
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: to war. This is something that I think we should
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: cover at some point on an episode. From eighteen forty
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: six to eighteen forty eight, Mexico lost and under the
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo everything north of the Rio Grand
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: basically about half of its territory at the time, was
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: given up, and Las Vegas Decantana was in there. So
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: now the US government officially is control, is controlling of
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: what would end up being the Las Vegas we know,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: and some of us love, some of us maybe don't
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: so much. And this was the year eighteen forty eight,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: so that was right before the Gold Rush of forty nine,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: so it was already a stopover because of that old
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Spanish trail, and it was just more firmly entrenched as
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: these forty nine ers would head west looking to catch
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: a show and play little Blackjack, I guess, and spend the.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Night for sure. And that gold Rush of forty nine
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: is what really disrupted the pious, kind of generally peaceful
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: occupation of the area because a lot of people came
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: westward and passed through Vegas, and some even stayed and
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: decided to stick a claim there. And in eighteen fifty five,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: like I said, the Mormons showed up. Brigham Young said
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: to William Bringhurst, get thee with thirty of thoused people
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: to thine Las Vegas area and set up a mission. Basically,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: he's like, don't kid yourself. Let's build a fort because
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: we're not exactly sure how this is going to be received. Now, well,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: once you've built a fort, maybe, you know, make friendly
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: contact with the Piute people, teach them how to farm,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: and then baptize them when they're not paying attention.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: That's right. He kind of buried the lead, didn't he. Yeah,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So while they were there, they did put up a fort,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: they did baptize I think the number was fifty nine
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: people of you know, Piute people. And then they did
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: so thing or they found something that ended up being
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: really kind of key to why Las Vegas continued to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: be a thing, which was or they found lead or
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and set up a mine nearby. And as you will see,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: mining and finding deposits of all kinds of valuable things
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: ended up being a very you know, key reason Vegas
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: became Vegas.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: For sure. And let's imagine like having the knowledge of
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: just how to set up a mind, could you start
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: a mind today? How to scratch? I couldn't know. I'd
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: be like, I don't I don't know what I'm doing.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: But that's what they did, and like you said, it
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: kind of created this this legacy discovery. But they they
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: ran into a problem that would be a problem for
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: much for a while longer, and that was that the
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: intensive agriculture they were trying to create was not sustainable
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: by the spring that had burst forth eight thousand years before. Yeah, yeah,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: it was good. You could raise a little bit of crops.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: You could definitely do some hunter gathering. You could get
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: a nice cool drink and bathe in it. But you
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: really couldn't do anything major with it. And so Brigham
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Young said, get Thoust back to Thine Salt Lake area
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: and just bring it in. But they left that fort,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: and that fort actually is still there today, in part
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: because a succession of people kind of came along and said,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: this is a really handy thing to have.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, you know, there was some other
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: stuff there. There were some cabins and you know, remnants
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: of life. So, like you said, when people would pass
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: through there because it was still a stop on that
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: trade trail, people would be like, oh great, we can
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: you know, we can kind of use this stuff. And
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: that happened with a gentleman named Octavius decatur Gas who
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: was from that's two s's by the way, and he
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: was from Ohio and went to California in eighteen fifty
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: selling prefab homes, which was great timing, yeah, because you
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: know that that forty nine er gold rush boom. It
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: was just on the heels of that, and people needed
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: places to live. They're kind of getting tired of those
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: canvas tents, I guess. So he had these little prefab
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: kit houses he was selling, and I think was doing
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: pretty well for himself doing that. But then he kind
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: of noticed everything that was going on around him as
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: far as people getting rich, staking claims and mining, and
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: he was like, I want to get in on that,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and he staked a claim, well several even, but one
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: at Eldorado Canyon, about fifty miles away from that original
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Mormon fort.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I saw The Las Vegas Review Journal described
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: od Gas as the kind of guy where opportunity frequently knocked,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: but he was always in the bathtub, And I think
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: that really kind of gets it across. This guy tried
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: a lot of stuff, but was I mean, he was
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: modestly successful, but his ambitions were never were never reached.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: But he kind of found his way into, you know,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: just enough success, but it would always be relatively short lived.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: And that came as far as Las Vegas is con
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: and when he happened upon that old Mormon fort with
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: a couple of buddies that he'd made in the mining trade,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: and they decided to give up mining for a little
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: while and take that fort and convert it into a
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: ranch to make a rest stop for travelers on their
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: way west. And this was actually a pretty smart move
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: because again there's water there. But more to the point,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: they used some of that water to grow grape vines,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: which they turned into wine, which is even harder to
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: find in the desert than water at this time. And
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: that made that place a must stop pit stop on
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: the way out to Los Angeles.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you could stop there and get a drink.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: It was like the seeds of early Las Vegas already planted.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The thing is is it was probably red wine
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: and red wine and like the hot dry desert is
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: not a good mix.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: No, it certainly as we know, you know how American
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: wine has grown. Now, it's not an ideal place to
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: grow wine. But back then I think it was like, okay,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: we can grow some grapes that will get you.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Drunk, right. I think that was the point, which is
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: very vegacy.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: It's very vegacy. So things start to accumulate there, as
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: in people and just you know, minors, people kind of
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: growing the town around him. He obviously is the I
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: guess sort of founder. Sorry bring him young. Was enjoying power.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: You know, he was the first guy there to set
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: up stakes for real, and so he ended up having
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: like influence and power. And when the US government said,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: you know what we want to do here is we
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: want to actually redraw these lines and these territory lines,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: and we want to actually scoot Nevada over to where
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: this weird Vegas ranches encompass within Nevada, he was like, no,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: like this is Arizona. I'm really upset by this, to
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the point where he e he even tried to like
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: clip off the point of Lincoln count to make a
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Las Vegas County, and he wasn't able to because he
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: had all of a sudden, a bunch of Nevadens, well
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: they weren't state Nevadens yet, but Nevada territorians removed from
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: his constituency. So he was sort of left with no sway. No.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's tough to be a politician when you're
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: not actually representing anybody, because they all moved because they
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: didn't want to pay the new Nevada taxes. So his
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: political life kind of petered out. Apparently he was slapped
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: with a two year tax bill too, and I couldn't
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: find whether he actually paid it or not. From what
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I can tell about him, he probably didn't. But he
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: set about reinvesting himself into the ranch. He got married,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: had a couple of kids, raised them on the ranch too,
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: and his wife Mary, by the way, the Paiute people
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: who worked for them called her long Eye because apparently
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: she was a crack rifle shot. So they're kind of
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: farming doing the ranch thing, making their way. And I
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: guess he had borrowed about five thousand dollars from a
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: guy named Archibald Stuart. He basically mortgaged his ranch for
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: five grand and he's planning on paying it back with
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: a bumper crop that he was expecting of pink beans,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: which are delicacy in the area. I can't remember what
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: else he grew, making wine, all that stuff, And apparently
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: it was a freak weather. There's this terrible weather that
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: year and his crop got wiped out, and so he
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: was forced to basically hand over the ranch to Archibald Stuart,
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: and he and his wife and kids moved to Pomona.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what a great place to end up. Sure, I
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: love Pomona.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I've never been.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I've just been once. I one saw the Shins play
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a show in Pomona. Oh wow, what a story. Yeah.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: The only thing I remember about that show is Emily
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: and I were really bugged because the crowd was young
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: and they weren't like getting into it. You're like, what's
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: going on here? This is like a great show.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how would you end up at that show if
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: you weren't into the Shins?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Or maybe they were just just trying
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: to play cool.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: They were like, play that song from gardens toat Oh God.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: So in the meantime, things are really booming just in
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: that area of Eldorado Canyon as far as mining goes,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Like copper and lead and gold and silver and everything.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Like people are getting rich out there, it gets a
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: little rowdy, of course, whenever you know miners are sticking
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: claims and making a whole lot of money, there's going
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: to be some lawlessness. But it was a good place
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: to be if you wanted to mine, if you didn't
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: mind the heat so much. The one problem was they
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: didn't have a railroad yeah to get that stuff places.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: So their only really route was to use these armed
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: freight wagons, which were slow and expensive. And they were like,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: we need a.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Railroad, yeah, And the railroad had already been established by
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: eighteen sixty nine, it just wasn't in Las Vegas because
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: it was still just kind of a dusty wagon trail town.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Now it was rich and it needed help getting those
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: riches out of Las Vegas. So the railroads were like, oh, okay,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: we'll come over there, and so they started building a railroad.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: There was a reason why Las Vegas got a railroad,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: and it was actually two dudes, two very wealthy dudes,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: butting heads, trying to get control over the railroad in
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: that area. And I say, we tell their story when
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: we come back from a break.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Let's do it learn and stuff with Joshua John stuff.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: You shut up, all right. So this is the story
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of a sort of a brief little railroad war. That's
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: hard to say, so I'm not going to say it again.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: One guy was William Clark. He was a copper tycoon
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: from Montana, was also in northern politics. And the other
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: guy was a guy named E. H. Harriman, and he
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: was the head of the Union Pacific Railroad. He was
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: looking for a connection to California. He was shut out
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: of San Francisco, so he looked south toward Los Angeles.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Clark wanted to get in on this mining boom, and
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: he said, well, I think we should have a train
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: there as well, so we can connect this Salt Lake
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: city to Los Angeles. It can go sort of that
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: old Spanish trade route actually, and it can go right
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: here through Las Vegas and I can use it and
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: it'll be great. He bought a small railroad that ended
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: in la and started to build a connection. When he
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and Harriman started butting.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Heads, right turned out they finally managed to come to
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: terms with one another. Because William Clark was really interested
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: in Vegas and building a town out of Vegas. Whereas
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Harriman was more interested in the actual railroad. So I
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: guess Clark sold his interest to Harriman and started focusing
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: on building a town around this new railroad line through Vegas.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: And what's interesting is William Clark, he was extraordinarily rich,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: but his competition in staking and laying out a town
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: in Las Vegas was an African American land surveyor named J. T.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: McWilliams who had heard that William Clark was going to
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: build this railroad through Las Vegas and started buying up
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: land around I think the west side of the railroad,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: and he started building a town there. And there were
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: two towns on Vegas on the west side of the tracks,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: on the east side of the tracks. The east side
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: was Clark's and the west side was McWilliams, And those
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: were like the rival towns when Vegas was first established,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: I believe, starting around nineteen oh five.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, super interesting little side story there, I love it.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Thanks much forgotten to history, I think. So in nineteen
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: oh three, he Clark, that is, purchased that ranch Las
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Vegas Rancho and that spring from Helen Stewart, who was
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the widow of the gentleman who had foreclosed on what's
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: his name, Bass cas or Gods Gots, so he owned
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: all this land. Now he subdivided it up into about
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: twelve hundred lots, started auctioning them off in May nineteen
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: or sort of late nineteen oh four, and then in
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: spring nineteen oh five people started building there. And it
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: was like people were paying pretty good money for these
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: lots back then, considering you know where it was. And
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: because all of this, Clark County is named after William Clark.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: To day, that's really funny because Mark Twain called William
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Clark like basically the worst human being alive. He had
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: bribed the Montana legislature to make him a senator. And
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: we actually have the seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, which
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: says that senators are directly elected rather than appointed by
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: state legislators like they used to because of William Clark.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: And I didn't realize that they named the county after him.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: That's interesting, right, So I'm sure everyone's like, when are
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: you guys going to start talking about gambling and casinos?
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Just give us like twenty minutes.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: No, we're there. So gambling in Vegas, just like much
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: of the United States was a thing like people have
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: gambled off and on in the United States since there's
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: been a thing. They weren't necessarily casinos, but people would
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: play cards, they would play dice, they would play poker,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: all the kind of like good old fashioned, you know,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: person to person gambling games. In eighteen sixty one, this
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: is a few years before statehood, so this is in
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty one, the governor said, gambling is a felony.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: You can't do it here. You can't do it. Apparently
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: there was what they call the progressive movement at the
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: time that wanted to get rid of all kinds of
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: vices like that. And then eighteen sixty nine, after they
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: got their statehood about five years later, they legalized it
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: for geeze about forty years, but then reverse that made
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: it illegal again in nineteen oh nine. Sure, but in
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: that time after nineteen oh nine that it was illegal,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: they said like, hey, listen, you can have your poker games,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: you can have your dice games, you can gamble against
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: other people and stuff like that, but what you can't
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: do is what's called wide open gambling, which is gambling
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: against the house as the bank. Right.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Then they reversed that too in nineteen thirty one, thanks
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: to the depression and the local minds kind of falling
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: on hard times, they Las Vegas or I guess Nevada
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: passed what's called the Eide Open Gambling Bill, that's what
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: they called it, and they said, yeah, you can have
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: a you can become a licensed gambling establishment, and we're
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: going to regulate you and tax the heck out of you.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: But you can gamble. Now, what's funny is the Nevada
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: still doesn't have a lottery. Like they said, yes you
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: can gamble, No, you can't have a lottery. And I
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: think at first it was to protect locals. They started
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: they legalized gambling to pull tourists in even from the outset.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: And then now I think the gaming companies that run
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: the casinos in Vegas or they just opposed a lottery
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: anytime it comes up because they don't want to even
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: have that as competition.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Like that five dollars that you spend on a scratch off,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: we want you to put that into our slot machine.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you could be doing that. You can put it
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: on roulette, whatever you want to do, as long as
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: you're betting it with us.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I could totally see that. So they're fighting the
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: depression in nineteen thirty one by legalizing gambling. Construction the
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Hoover Dam started that same year, and all of a
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: sudden you had people nearby that had a little money
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: in their pocket, which was they were, I guess happy
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: to go over to what was you know, sort of
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: the first area of Vegas to feature casinos was Fremont
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Street and things started happening there was there's actually one
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: of those casinos that opened in nineteen oh six called
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the Golden Gate is still in Las Vegas. Yeah, that
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: I'd looked up pictures. I've never been inside it, but
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna check it out next time im in Vegas.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: It looks super cool in old school.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: It's on the Fremont Street experience.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Right, I have no idea I think it is. So.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone has been to Vegas recently,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: but in the nineties they closed off a six block
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: stretch of Fremont Street that has a lot of these
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: original casinos and hotels on them and made it just
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: pedestrian only, and then they covered it with a light
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: show roof that has forty nine million led lights across it.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: And so it's it's it's whatever that weird non time
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: of day is that they always is indoors in Vegas.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: They managed to do that on a six block stretch
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: of street. So it's really something that's called the Fremont
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Street experience. And these first casinos and resorts that's what that's.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: That was them and some of them are still there.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Like you said, the Golden Gate or the Yeah, the
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Golden Gate is it?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Uh? Is it awesome to like walk under that thing?
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: It's pretty cool. It's cool. It's got a lot of
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: street performers like Man's Chinese Theater, Times Square, but then
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: it has a lot of history that Neon Museums there,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: the mob museums there. Like it's it's pretty well done,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: to tell you the truth. Vegas vic that like fifty
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: foot tall cowboy that is so iconic from Vegas from
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: the Pioneer Club. Oh he's there. Yeah, it's pretty neat.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: All right, I'll check it out, but just.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Be where you could. I'm going to make a case
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: it's a bit of a tourist trap.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: So we recommend are we recommending it officially?
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: All right, go to meol Well first and then go
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: to that.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: So this was again the nineteen thirties, so there was
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: illegal gambling going on all over Los Angeles at the time,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and they were like, hey, Vegas is not that far.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Pretty soon there'll be a very cheap and quick Southwest
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Airlines flight that goes there four hundred times a day.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: But now we can make that drive at least through
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: the desert, just like Vince Vaughn did, and swingers and
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: gamble our little hearts away. And one of those guys
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: was well, he was a guy. His name was Guy.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: His name was Guy McAfee, and he was the commander
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: of the LAPD Vice Squad, which is to say, at
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: the time he was probably dirty and crooked because he
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: was swept out along with a lot of the corruption
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: in the early nineteen thirties and the LAPD one of
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: their one of the first runs at making the LAPD
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: straight and narrow. I guess, like, I'm not banging on them.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I think they have a rich history of corruption, right.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: I just didn't want to sound too harsh, but we
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: all know that we've seen the movies. Sure, But he
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: was known as the Captain and he was at the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: time in La married to a madam, a Hollywood madam
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: who ran a string of gambling houses. They were all
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: connected to the Mob, of course, and the riding was
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: on the wall that he needed to get the heck
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: out of Dodge, which was La and he said, Vegas
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: seems like kind of the perfect landing spot for me.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so he showed up and bought the Golden Nugget.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: He bought another place called the Pair o Dice Club,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: which I read that five times before I got it.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: The Paradise Club. Oh, well, I got it, you got
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: it now.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: I didn't get it the first one.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, good, I'm glad it wasn't just me.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I thought you were just confused by a pair of dice.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, it was the point I didn't get.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it now.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: And the reason why I finally got it is because
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: he set up an area outside of Las Vegas city
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: limits that he named Paradise Paradise, Nevada. It's technically not
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: a town, it's unincorporated Clark County, but he named it
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: after his club, Paro Dice. But he called this area Paradise.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: And this is the strip, This is the Las Vegas
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Strip still today, everything from the Bellaggio, the Venetian, the
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: Win the Cosmopolitan, the Staybridge Suites. All of them are
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: actually outside of Las Vegas city limits in this unincorporated
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: part of Clark County called Paradise that was set up
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties by a corrupt LAPD Vice squad
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: commander named Guy McAfee.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Nice subnation, thanks. So this is where I mean they
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: called it the Strip then, and this is where things
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: really started to boom all this development began. Mind you,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: this was still in the nineteen four so they were
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: still sort of the ranch style, low lying, not you know,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: these big high rises that would come later on. We'll
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: get to that.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: They were like s kicker casino resorts.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Oh totally. I think everyone knows what you mean, right, Yeah, I.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Think so, you know, kicking what I said, what I
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: was gonna say, I'm just kidding.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: So there was a hotel here from California named Thomas Hall.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: He opened the first sort of all self contained in
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: and of itself luxury casino resort in nineteen forty one
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: called l Rancho Vegas, named after he had other properties
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: name named Rancho. As the story goes, his car broke
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: down outside of Vegas, and he was out there burning
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: up in the heat, and he had like a vision
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: for to just be in a swimming pool, and so
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: he was like, that needs to happen out here. So
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: that's what he did. He opened up the first big
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: place that had swimming pools and.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Restaurants, movie stars.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Movie stars and opera house, had places where you could shop.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: It had the casino, of course, like the first what
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: we think of as a casino was that one. And
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: he did pretty well with it. They had show girls,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: they had the whole nine yards.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were the first one to have Vegas showgirls.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: And I wasn't joking when I said movie stars. Clark
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Gable was very famously stationed at El Rancho, Vegas when
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Carol Lombard, his wife, died in a plane crash nearby,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: I think on Table Mountain on the way to Las Vegas.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: And he wasn't the only one. Like this was a
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: place where stars from La came. And as people from
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: people in Vegas started building places that like the cream
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: of the crop of Hollywood stars wanted to hang out,
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: it gave Vegas like the veneer of glamour that it
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: originally had. This is when it started the early forties.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know things were booming throughout the forties
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: and then into the fifties is when things even kicked
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: into a higher gear, like Vegas are just ramping up
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: more and more through the decades. That's when the Desert
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: End was built, the El Dorado Club downtown, which would
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: become Beny Binyon's Horseshoe Club. I think it's now just Binyons. Actually,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: I think for a few years now it hasn't been
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: there at all, but it became Binions. It was famous
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: because the World Series of Poker was there every year.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty five, the first high rise opened, which
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: was the Riviera. It was behind stories and get this,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: they paid Liberachi fifty thousand dollars per week in nineteen
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: fifty five to play there.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty five money.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: That's six hundred and thirty one thousand dollars a week. Oh,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: westake totally as is our tradition. Fifty eight Stardust opened
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and we saw the debuts of a couple of gentlemen
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: who would be Vegas legends. Wayne Newton and Frank Sinatra
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: debuted there. And then also in the fifties is when
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: the first sort of boom and the wedding chapel business started.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then I saw somewhere I cannot remember where
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: that no less than ten major casino resorts were built
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: in the fifties. That is an amazing building boom, Like
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: this is when Las Vegas became Vegas as we know it,
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: like it nostalgically, right. I also saw somewhere that I
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: think eleven were built and of those eleven, ten of
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: them were either financed by or outright owned by the mafia.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: That was when the mafia really got its grip on
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Las Vegas in the early fifties and throughout actually even
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: in the forties, the mid to late forties thanks to
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: a guy named Bugsy Seagull. But by the fifties, when
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: the fifties rolled around, like it was just it seemed
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: like it was reversible, the grip that the mob had
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: on Las Vegas.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: And you said the words, Bugsy Siegel, and that feels
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: like a great place for a break, learn and stuff
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: with Joshua John stuff fu shine up.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, So Chuck, I said, Bugsy Siegel, I'm actually talking
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: about one Benjamin Siegelbaum, who was born in nineteen oh six,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: and by the time he reached his teenage years was
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: already running protection rackets on poor street push cart pedlars,
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: because you know, a protection racket means like, I'm going
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: to protect you from me if you don't give me,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: if you give me money. If you don't, then I'm
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: going to come after you.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Right yeah.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: This guy was doing this as a teenager. He became
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: friends with a guy named Meyer Lanski, and the two
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: of them together started bootlegging in during Prohibition, right.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was in New York. They eventually merged
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: with what was called the Syndicate, which was a nationwide
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: criminal enterprise, you know, it was the mob and Siegel
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: then formed a spinoff organization called Murder Inc. I totally
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: think we should do a whole episode on Murder Inc.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: At some point. Sure, so we're not going to get
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: too into it, but Murder Inc. Was exactly like it sounds.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: It was an organization that did contract killings. Apparently between
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: four hundred and one thousand contract killings took place at
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the hand of Murder Inc. Including supposedly about thirty individuals
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: personally killed by Bugsy Siegull.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you have a criminal gang called murder Inc. Yeah,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: that's going to draw the attention of the authorities. And
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: that happened very much in New York, and all of
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: a sudden they tried to crack down on the Murder
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Ink gang member. So Bugsy Siegel said, so long New York,
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: I'm heading out west, and he landed in Los Angeles.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: He was staying at the mansion of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: who herself was a mafioso. I guess mafiosa. She was
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: from Alabama but had somehow fallen into the mob. She
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: was a mafiosa as well. She wasn't just like a mall.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: She was a gangster herself.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And she was played by Annette Benning to her
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Warren Beatty to her, Warren Baby her husband. And it's
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: a great movie.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: I've never seen it.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Ooh, man, Bugsy was awesome. Really yeah, yeah, yeah, it
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: was really really good. I mean, Warren Beatty didn't make
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: a bad movie that he directed.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Oh he directed it, didn't he direct? dISHTAR uh uh?
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: I don't think so.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, Okay, I've never seen his star. I haven't either,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: but I was alive at the time. O Ye, enough
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: that I know it was just a punchline even still
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm pretty sure he directed Bugsy, but I'll have
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: to check that at any rate. Really really good movie.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So that's about those two, and really it's
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: about Bugsy Siegel, and really it's about Bugsy Siegel building
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Las Vegas. That is true to an extent in that
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: he really was the one who brought the mob to Vegas,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: and apparently it was through some sort of happenstance. He
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: was living out in Hollywood and he met a guy
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: named Billy Wilkerson who was a gambler, a hotelier who
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: was trying to build like a really class joint out
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: in Vegas. And he said, Bugsy, why don't you come
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: in on this. Let me borrow some money from you.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: You can have a stake in this hotel we're gonna build.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: And Bugsy said, as long as it's not one of
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: those s kicker, you know, old Western hayseed themed resorts,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: I'm in. And she said, no, no, no, that's gonna be
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: a great place. I don't know what we're gonna call
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: it yet, and Bugsy said, well, let's call it the
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Flamingo because that's my nickname for my girlfriend, Virginia Hill
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: because she has really long legs. So we're going to
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: call this place Flamingo is like, you know, a little
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: wink toward her. And Bugsy was suddenly in the casino
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: resort building business. And he got in even further when
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Billy Wilkerson couldn't pay him back because Bugsy said, well,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: I'm going to kill you if you don't give me
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: this hotel. And that was the exit of Billy Wilkerson
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: and the real entree of Bugsy Siegel into Las Vegas,
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: which established the Mafia, the Syndicate, the mob as we
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: know it, into Vegas. And this was about the mid
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: nineteen forties.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he really And by the way, Barry Levison directed,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: So I was wrong on that, Okay, but it's still
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: really good. Barry Letts didn't direct many bad movies either.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Didn't he do Diner?
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Great movie? Okay, you didn't like Diner?
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen it. I was just I was legitimately
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: ask I wasn't throwing shaite on Diner.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: No, no, no. But when you said okay, oh, I know that.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: I could read between my own lines, but I didn't
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: mean to write anything.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Then, Uh, well, that's a good quote. So he really
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: got involved in this casino, like the building, the design.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Like he wasn't just like all right, I'm gonna sort
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: of run this thing now and just let everyone do
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: their thing. He was involved in like the minutia of
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the detail of the design of like picking out the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: bedsheets and like you know, the artwork that hung in
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: the rooms. Like he was really really I think he
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: kind of found himself, Like he went to La to
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: try to be an actor. He was no good at that,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Like he always felt like wanted to be something more
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: than like a two bit mobster, which is what he was.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Well he no, he wasn't too big. He was like
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: the wet narcotics importer in the west on the West coast.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I didn't mean too bit. I just meant
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: he didn't want to be looked at as the mobster.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: That's why he tried to be an actor, gotcha, he tried.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: He tried to be a hotel yer, right, hotel yer. Yeah,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: but you know, none of that stuff was working out,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: including initially at least the Flamingo, because when they opened it,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: it was not a big hit right out of the gate.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Much to the chagrin of the syndicate.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: He lost three hundred thousand dollars in one week the
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: first week it was open, and it was such a
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: huge loss that he had to shut the place down
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: so he didn't lose any more money, and he had
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: to get back to kind of reconfiguring things. Apparently they
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: didn't have rooms ready when they opened, so all the
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: gamblers came and then took their money elsewhere. All of
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: those details that he had personally selected were really expensive.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: The original price tag was a million dollars. It ballooned
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: up to past six million. So yeah, there's a very
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: widely held belief that Bugsy was in hot water with
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: the mafia partners including Meyer, Lanski and Lucky Luciano, who
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: were backing him and his venture into Las Vegas. The
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: thing is, he supposedly when he reopened out of the
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: Gate the Flamingo in nineteen forty seven, started to become profitable.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: So I've seen people say like, no, he actually wasn't
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: in hot water with his mafia people. And the reason
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: why it matters is because six months after it reopened,
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: or a few months after it reopened in June of
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven, Bugsy Seagull was assassinated hit in his
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: own home in well, Virginia Hills home in Los Angeles.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hit through the window from behind, kind of sitting
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: on the couch. It's a great scene in the movie
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: His You know, the traditional thinking is that Lucky Luciano
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: and the syndicate was behind it, right Mayer Lansky, who
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: was his sort of oldest friend throughout this whole thing
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: because they were buddies back in New York in the
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: early days. I think just it was sort of seeing
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: the sad demise of his friend and what was going on.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Ben Kingsley is so so good as Mayor Lansky in
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: the movie. But not everyone believes it was a mob hit.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: There's a guy named Bernie Sendler who was a emissary
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: for Lansky back in the day, and back then he
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: was on the record of saying like, I don't like
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of this deadn't add up as being a
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: mob hit. I think it was one of Virginia Hill's brothers,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: one of her Marine Corps brothers, that was angry that
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: she was like wrapped up in all this stuff.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he makes the point. And this guy was literally
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: here at the time like he was working in Vegas
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: with Siegull and others at the time, so he knows
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: what he's talking about. He was saying that Siegel was
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: legit enough that you would have had to have get
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: gotten permi directly from Lucky Luciano, or the order would
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: have come directly from Lucky Luciano to kill Bugsy Seagull.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: And then this guy's this guy's opinion, Maya Orlansky never
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: would have allowed that. He wouldn't have just stepped aside
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: and let his old friend be murdered hit and again
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: like he wasn't apparently in hock to the mob in
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: any way that he couldn't repay. So yeah, this guy,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: this guy said it was one of Virginia Hill's brothers. Also,
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: he's got some pretty good points. One he said that
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: was not a mob hit. The mob doesn't use M
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: one carbines and shoot through an open window, Like they
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: take you on a car ride and the guy seated
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: behind you in the car shoot you in the head,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: so they don't know, Yeah, that's how that's how the
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: mafia hit you. Right, So he's like it just didn't
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: add up to a mob hit. So that's a pretty
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: pretty interesting surprising thing. But if you think about it,
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Bugsy was there for just a couple of years. But
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: the the the gains he made and the the ground
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: where he laid for the mafia is what led directly
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: to that huge boom in the control of the mafia
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: of Las Vegas that just erupted in the fifties.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and then you know, into the sixties it
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: was firmly entrenched as like a mob hangout, obviously, a
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: place where you could gamble, where you could go and
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: get married in two seconds or divorced in two seconds,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: where sex work was legal. I think in sixty three,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: these guys Dick Taylor and Pat Howell wrote a book
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: called Las Vegas not a colon but a Comma rare
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: city of sin question mark. And that's where supposedly the
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: name sin City came around. Really kind of linked up
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: well with everything that was going on there at the time.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Great movie too, Sin City. Remember it was like based
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: on a graphic novel. It's got like Owen and.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, man, it's so good. That's Sin City.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: That was good. Yeah, like the black and white Yeah, yeah,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: really good. And the other big thing that happened in
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: the early sixties was mccaren Airport opened up in nineteen
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: sixty two, which, all of a sudden, you know, that
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Southwest Airlines flight could start happening, although I don't know
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: if it happened back then, so don't google that.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it wasn't just people from La and you know,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Arizona coming to Las Vegas. Now, all of a sudden,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: there was people around the world. And apparently by the
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: seventies the largest population of tourists in Las Vegas were Midwesterners.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty funny. Oh as residents, no, no, no, as tourists
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: as visitors. Like the airport really really changed things. One
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: other really big thing that changed things in the sixties
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: for Vegas was Howard Hughes. So I said before it
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: looked like the Mob's grip on Las Vegas was irreversible,
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: and it may have been, and if Howard Hughes hadn't
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: have shown up. And he did a couple of things.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: One he started buying casinos and hotels from the Mob directly. Yeah,
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: so for I think a little period in the sixties
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: maybe seventies, he was the single largest casino owner in
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: the in town. So he just basically took over from
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: the MOB by buying them out. And then also he
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: proposed that Las Vegas and Nevada the Gaming Commission changed
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: their rules about corporate ownership because before, if you were
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: a corporation and you wanted to own a casino, every
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: single shareholder had to pass a background check. You could
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: be talking about thousands of people. It was just untenable.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: You couldn't do it. And he said, why don't you
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: just make it so that the key players, like the
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: real high up execs who are going to be running
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: the place, just do backgrounds on them, forget the shareholders.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: And the Gaming Commission said, that's a that's a really
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: good idea. And now all of a sudden, the Mob
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: had competition from Wall Street and huge corporations that were
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: coming in and they ended up getting muscled out.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that was that was it. That was
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: either the beginning of the beginning or the beginning of
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: the end, depending on which way you want to look
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: at it. Yeah, but once Wall Street corporations could kind
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: of stroll in there and just start buying up these
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: properties that you know, this is in the in the
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, so this is this is still like
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: a boom time for Vegas. It's a city that's seemingly
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: always expanding and under construction. Like I don't remember going
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: to Vegas. I started going there in the I guess
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: like nineteen ninety one or so was my first trip,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: And every time I've been has just struck me as like,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: are they ever going to stop developing and building in
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: this town? And probably not, because it continued all, you know,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: all through them. They've had their lulls. I think there
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: was you know, some years here and there, within decades
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: that things weren't aren't as robust and where they were,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: you know, where the gambling industry and the whole sin
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: industry sort of took a little bit of a hit,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: but not that much.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't even necessarily that that it took a hit.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: It was that Vegas it just lost its glitz and glamour,
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: especially starting in the seventies and in through the eighties,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: where it just became tacky. That's what everybody thought of
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: as a tacky. The entertainers who used to like draw
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: crowds internationally, they weren't there. The people who were performing
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: in Vegas, their careers were washed up, right, So like
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: that was great.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nope.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: The food was terrible, like all you can eat prime
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: rib for like five dollars kind of stuff. This idea
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: of Vegas in the eighties. It was just decrepit and
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: a place you went like as a lark or if
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: you had like a serious gambling problem and liked five
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: dollars prime rib.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: And in the same way that Howard Hughes kind of
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: came along and was like, I'm going to save this town,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Steve Wynn did the same thing at a time when
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Vegas was viewed as super tacky and backs and just lame.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: He invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the Mirage
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: and he opened it, gave thirty million dollars to Sigfried
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: and Roy and completely changed the face of Las Vegas,
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: completely changed the market who they were trying to attract.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: They were suddenly attracting families, like it was okay to
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: bring your kids to Vegas now, like there was something
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: for everybody. And he completely saved Las Vegas.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I think like a place like Caesar's
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: before that did a lot to sort of raise the
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: you know, the perception of Vegas is it's but it
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: wasn't like in the family way, No, in like.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: The fantasy way though, like like that. They definitely started that,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: I think, Yeah.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: I mean when they started building casinos with roller coasters
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: and playgrounds and more family friendly shows, because you know,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: at one point Vegas like all those shows were like
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: topless basically, right, and then all of a sudden, if
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: you had family friendly stuff going on, it was it
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, you don't have to just you know,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: the gambling addict in your family isn't the only one
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: that's going to want to come here. Now you can.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: You can be that and drag your kids along and
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: they can go see a kid friendly show.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, definitely, bring the gambling addict in your family,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: We want them there. But you guys can come too, right.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it got a lot more expensive, you mean,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the old Vegas days, even when I first started going there,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: you could get a pretty cheap room and a pretty
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: cheap meal. But that that all changed. Vegas is not
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: a cheap town, to know it anymore.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: It changed thanks to Steeve whenn in that whole shift,
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: and now it kind of shifted again to this kind
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: of like ultra luxury destination and that's where we are
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: right now. Yeah, well, let's Las Vegas up to basically now.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: I know we said we're going to go to late
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: eighties and nineties, but we took it even further. So
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: if you didn't like that, sorry, If you want to
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: know more about Las Vegas, start reading about it, go
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: visit it. Whatever you want to do. And since I
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: said whatever you want to do is time for listener may.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: This is gasoline cleaning mystery resolved. We had a few
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: people write in about that. In the episode The Teleisian
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Massacre from December twenty twenty, you discuss how the instigator
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: and murder at the scene of the crime was in
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: a state worker named Julian Carlton. While retrieving the gasoline
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: that caused part of the fire incident and the property,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: he told his boss that he was getting the gasoline
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: to clean a rug. Why do I remember this tiny
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: detail because at the end of the episode, Josh says
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: he found Carlton's grave on the website Find a Grave,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: and rather innocuously, a pop up bubble on the site,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: prompting the viewer to write a moving memory, said what
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: is one thing you'll always remember about Julian Chuck answered
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: that question by saying he could really get the stain
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: out of a rug. And I found that joke absolutely hilarious.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Love the show, guys, can't wait for you to come
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: back to Cleveland. I'm the manager of the largest site
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: seeing ship and clean Lynn on Lake Erie and the
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Cyoga River, The Good Time three and Chuck. I'm also
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: a graduate at the University of Akron go zips And
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: that is from Luke ucbo is how I'm gonna pronounce
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: that very long?
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: I got it right, Luke, Thanks a lot, Luke, eat
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: your heart out of Good Times one and two. If
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: you want to be like Luke and tell us how
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: much we cracked you up. We love hearing that kind
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: of thing. You can wrap it up, spank it on
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.