Las Vegas Myth Revisited: The Las Vegas Strip is located in the city of Las Vegas
Editor's Note: "Vegas Myth Busted" is published every Monday, with a flashback edition on Fridays. Today’s entry in our ongoing series originally appeared on October 28, 2022.
The sign that says "Welcome to wonderful Las Vegas, Nevada" is a liar, not because of the wonderful part, but because everyone is welcome to Las Vegas. The sign is located on the Las Vegas Strip four miles south of the city of Las Vegas for drivers traveling from Enterprise, Nevada to Paradise, Nevada. Both are unincorporated townships in Clark County.
Las Vegas is not what the world thinks of Las Vegas. If your entire trip to Las Vegas consists of landing at Harry Reid International Airport and stopping and gambling on the Strip, you will never set foot in the city of Las Vegas .
OK So couldn’t this sign be read as welcoming drivers to the greater Las Vegas area? No, that would be another lie. The Las Vegas Valley begins near Sloan, Nevada, 11 miles south of the marker.
What is given?
money. Plus, there's a little secret that the owners of the original Las Vegas Strip hotels (and probably the current hotel) don't want to tell visitors: Nevada Paradise was a place they invented to avoid paying taxes to the city of Las Vegas and circumventing its stricter laws and regulations.
As early as 1950, Pair-o-Dice Club, Thunderbird, El Rancho, Last Frontier, Flamingo and Desert Inn were popping up along both sides of Highway 91, then the main thoroughfare from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. So it was a natural move for Las Vegas Mayor Ernie Clarkin.
He sought to annex the area now that it was no longer the undeveloped desert of Clark County and shiny new casino resorts were diverting more and more traffic from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Expanding the city's tax base at the time would fund his ambitious construction plans and eliminate the city's growing debt.
Property taxes are much higher within city limits than outside the city ($5 per $100 of value versus $3.48 per $100 of value). Gambling and liquor license fees and taxes are also higher. This made it uncomfortable for a group of casino managers led by Gus Greenbaum, whom gangster Meyer Lansky appointed in 1947 at the Flamingo Hotel to replace the late Ba Bugsy Siegel. The group lobbied Clark County commissioners to gain township status. This would prevent annexations without council consent.
Many internet sources have accused the committee of accepting bribes from the Mafia to create the town of Paradise, which is entirely possible, if unlikely. Lobbyists included Desert Inn "owner" Wilbur Clark, frontman of Cleveland gangster Moe Dalitz. Eugene Moehring, a former history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, noted in his 1989 book Resort Cities in the Sun Belt that the commissioners had other motivations for voting to incorporate the town.
“Victory came on December 8, 1950, when county commissioners, eager to halt the expansion of Las Vegas while increasing their own tax and power base, granted the petitioners’ request,” he wrote.
Paradise is named after the area's previous name. Paradise Valley, as it has been known since at least 1910, has unusually high water tables, making the land a farmer's paradise. When the community was founded, it was one mile wide and four miles long. A month later, it expanded to include all residential areas in Paradise Valley, growing to 54 square miles.
The Home of Coffee
Any doubts about the new community's legitimacy were confirmed by the composition of its first city council, which was composed entirely of Greenbaum, Dalitz and executives from El Rancho, Last Frontier and Thunderbird. (Incidentally, eight years after Paradise was formed, Greenbaum followed in Siegel's footsteps in another way, becoming the victim of another gang-style murder that was never solved.)
Even though the casino-hotel on Highway 91 is now a paradise, they still describe their location as Las Vegas in their marketing campaigns, postcards and properties. The large resorts that replaced them remain so to this day. It's easy to understand why. Continuing the myth allows them to enjoy the international reputation of a Las Vegas address without paying a penny in city taxes.
Why is it called the Las Vegas Strip/Las Vegas Strip?
When construction began on Interstate 15, the main route from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, Highway 91's name was changed to reflect its transition to a local road. Since it leads to Las Vegas, it officially became the Las Vegas Strip in 1959.
Casino hoteliers are delighted because it makes paradise feel more like Las Vegas to visitors.
The earliest known reference to Highway 91 as "The Strip" appears in a March 1947 newspaper advertisement for a new casino hotel called "The Big Hat." "Straight from Ciro's and Lindy's," it describes the Alperi Trio's musical acts, "from the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles to the Las Vegas Strip." (Lindy's Steakhouse was torn down long ago; Ciro's became the Comedy Store in 1972 .)
According to the widow of former Los Angeles police officer Guy McAfee, "The Strip" was used shortly after her late husband bought the small Pair-O-Dice Casino on the abandoned street in 1939. "The nickname. It's a pure travesty of the busy Sunset Strip he left behind.
However, this story is likely apocryphal, as no records of it emerged until after McAfee's death in January 1960. Regardless, in 1959, when Interstate 15 was under construction, Highway 91 was decommissioned and renamed the Las Vegas Strip to reflect its functional transition to a local street, and the Strip came into common use. That same year, Clark County hired the Western Electric Display Company to further codify the myth. The company installed a "Welcome to Wonderful Las Vegas" sign designed by Betty Willis.
Watch a new episode of “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on Visit and read about previously debunked Vegas myths. Do you have any suggestions for a Vegas myth we haven’t debunked yet? Email [email protected].
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