History of Old Las Vegas - The Begining of a Hotel Casino Giant

By 1890 railroad developers had determined the water-rich Las Vegas Valley would be a prime location for a stop facility and town. More than a quarter century earlier, Nevada, known as the Battle Born State, had been admitted to the Union in 1864 during the Civil War. The American explorer who discovered the water-meadows of Las Vegas in 1844. Later becoming California's first Senator (1850-54) the U.S. Republican Presidential candidate (1856), a Major General in the American Civil War (1861-65) and governor of Arizona Territory (18781883) . Called The Pathfinder, he is one of the most important figures in U.S. history due to his determination to explore, open and lead the West. Downtown Las Vegas' Fremont Street was named (1905) to honor his life's achievements. Work on the first railroad grade into Las Vegas began the summer of 1904. The tent town called Las Vegas sprouted saloons, stores and boarding houses.

Rails were connected with the eastern segment of track in October 1904. The San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, later absorbed by its parent the Union Pacific, made its inaugural run from California to points east on Jan. 20, 1905.

The railroad yards were located at the birthplace of a partially paved, dusty Fremont Street. Jackie Gaughan's Plaza Hotel, located at Main and Fremont streets in Downtown Las Vegas, today stands on the site of the original Union Pacific Railroad depot. Freight and passenger trains still use the depot site at the hotel as a terminal -- the only railroad station in the world located inside a hotel-casino.

Advent of the railroad led to the founding of Las Vegas on May 15, 1905. The SanPedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, owned by Montana Senator Williams Andrews Clark, auctioned off 1,200 lots in a single day in an area which today is casino-lined Glitter Gulch. When Las Vegas began in 1905, mainly just as a train stop - Goldfield (located 180 miles northwest) was enjoying its heyday-boomtown years of 1902-1912, when it yeilded over $20,000,000 in gold. Its population, in 1906, was 30,000. By 1950, its population was 275. While 1905 Las Vegas was basically filled with tents and shacks, Goldfield had four-story buildings and opulent hotels. The $450,000 Goldfield Hotel (on right) was then the most spectacular hotel in Nevada, employing a staff of 80 bartendars - having plush carpeting & upholstery, phones in every room, gilded columns, mahogany walls, crystal chandeliers, plus an elevator. The boom-years for Las Vegas wouldn't begin until after the 1931 completion of Boulder Dam and the 1931 legalization of gambling and 6 week divorces. After 1932, Las Vegas began marketing itself solely as a tourist resort.