Las Vegas Gambling

Las Vegas Gambling

“Las Vegas looks the way you'd imagine heaven must look at night” states New York Times best selling novelist, Chuck Palahniuk. (1) He has a point. Las Vegas is, in a way, an American Mecca -- a national tourist hotspot filled with resorts, gambling, shopping, dining, drinking, sporting, nightlife and most other things entertainment. Las Vegas is the fastest growing city and fastest growing job market in the United States. (source?) The city, a sort of massive adult carnival, is made up of elements largely alien to its native desert setting. For one, Vegas welcomes almost 40 million visitors per year, a number nearly seventy times the population of the city; but also its drinking water and food are largely imported and a series of hotels are modeled after famous cities, buildings and monuments from around the world. (2) While Vegas is a melting pot of different forms of entertainment, food and clothing, gambling has been inherently a part of Vegas before the brightly lit signs and extravagant resorts existed. The gaming industry in Las Vegas, which dates back to the days before the city was officially founded, is much more than just a piece of “Sin City’s” multi-faceted entertainment front: the industry has rescued and sustained its city’s economy, and continues to foster its fiscal growth and urban expansion – gambling has been an essential part of Vegas’ success.

Gambling was part of Las Vegas’ culture before the city’s inception and continued despite regulations banning it. In the 1850’s, prospectors hoping to cash in on the gold rush ravaged the largely unsettled American West. Word of the gold rush had spread all over the continent and beyond, attracting prospectors came from United States, as well as...

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...r – “By the end of the decade, there was a casino in-sight from every point in the city.” A record 15 million people visited Las Vegas in 1971, and an estimated 81% of those tourists gambled during their time in Vegas – an obvious effect of Hughes’ massive investments in casinos. By 1974, gaming revenue topped $1 billion, and just below 50% of Nevada’s state budget was supported by gaming taxes. Hughes was able to drastically increase the size and attraction of the city, making it more profitable, tourist friendly and glamorous. None of this would have been possible without the gaming industry to lure Hughes towards the city – once again gambling played a lead role in the growth of Las Vegas. The industry’s growth continued at a torrid pace, until the legalization of gambling in other states made the future of the city’s gaming industry murky.