VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: Golden Gate is the Oldest Casino in Vegas
Just a few weeks after the first property auction that gave rise to Las Vegas, in 1905, what is now known as the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino debuted. The first three lots the railroad sold were purchased by John F. Miller of Seattle for an astounding $1,750 so he could construct a hotel at 1 Fremont St.
The reason Miller constructed the Miller Hotel—named after, you guessed it—so fast was that it was essentially an enormous tent. It had cots for beds and canvas walls.
On January 13, 1906, Miller established the Hotel Nevada, a permanent building on the property. It was a real concrete two-story corner building with thirty-five rooms. All the contemporary conveniences one could ask for, including steam radiators, running water, electricity, and lamps, were included in the $1 per night rental rooms.
The hotel also housed Las Vegas's original telephone. Charles "Pop" Squires, who started the Las Vegas Age in 1905 and sold it to the Las Vegas Review-Journal 35 years later, had the hand-cranked Kellogg model installed in his office.
The number on the phone was 1.
When Was the Casino at the Hotel Nevada Opened?
Miller dubbed his hotel "the casino," since it had a single roulette wheel and a poker table. However, a state-wide gambling ban was implemented in 1909.
There has been historical disagreement on what transpired next. If Miller did really continue operating his illicit "casino" over the protracted period until gambling was once again allowed in 1931, he most definitely did not want any documentation of it to be made public or for pictures of his patrons breaking the law to be taken.
Miller made the decision to enlarge the hotel from two to four levels and rename it the Sal Sagev when gaming was once again authorized. That is incorrect for "Las Vegas."
A Different Casino
But whether Miller continued to operate his tiny casino during the gaming ban turns out not to matter when determining which casino in Las Vegas is the oldest. And the reason for that is that Miller closed it abruptly in 1934.
The Sal Sagev wouldn't see gambling again for 21 whole years.
However, neither Miller nor his son Abe, who had already acquired control of the hotel, controlled the Golden Gate Casino, which debuted on the bottom level of the establishment in 1955 and got its name from the San Francisco bridge.
It was a completely different company, the proprietors of which eventually purchased the Sal Sagev and renamed the entire enterprise the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino in 1974.
El Cortez is now unquestionably the oldest casino in Las Vegas by a margin of 14 years. Prior to Fremont Street ever being paved that far, it made its debut on November 7, 1941, on a half-block of Fremont Street between Sixth and Seventh streets.
It still stands in the same spot, with its original sign, today.
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