In Nevada’s banks and business houses, in the new subdivisions of Las Vegas and Reno, in the city halls, and most of all, in Carson City, there is suddenly an awareness that the Casino Era is drawing to a close.Ĭhange has been slow in coming to Nevada because it was so totally committed to the Casino Era. But beneath this exterior there is something different, something changed from the heady days of the late 1940s and 1950s, when a new casino was going up every six months. Today, twenty years later, the Strip is glittering and active, Las Vegas’ Fremont Street is garish and crowded, and the steady clink of slot machines is heard all night along Reno’s neon-studded main drag. Almost overnight the entire state - its economy, its government, its values, and its traditions-was reshaped to meet the needs of the new order. Nevada was suddenly plunged into the Casino Era. Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, Reno became the “quickie divorce” capital of the country, and in 1946, gangster “Bugsey” Siegel opened the Flamingo, the first of the great luxurious casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. JUST a generation ago Nevada was known to Americans chiefly as the state with the smallest population, the hardest to remember capital city (Carson City), and the largest deposits of valuable mineral ore in the union.
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