Nov 13, 2005
Las Vegas history packed with crises and corruption
Not being clairvoyant, the Spanish explorers who found a spring in the desert in 1829 named the site Las Vegas --the meadows. The 1905 founders of a sun-baked train repair station optimistically kept the name.
The far, far out community then began a precarious existence that regularly seemed to be rescued by divine intervention.
Of course, as viewers of "Las Vegas: An Unconventional History" will see in thrilling detail, the salvation was unlikely from any force honored in Sunday School. The remote oasis would be better dubbed, say, "Los Pecados" or "Las Culpas" --The Sins. The title of Part 1 of the "American Experience" presentation sums up what everyone knows: "Sin City."
Las Vegas is now as famous a world capital (yes) as it ever was. No one doesn't know the meaning of the slogan, "What happens here, stays here." A TV series is set there. Some 750 movies have been at least partially filmed there. Some 37 million tourists a year pass through Las Vegas, soaking up sun and fantasy, and leaving behind billions in hotels, restaurants, hookers' purses, wedding chapels and, by far most of all, casinos.
It is the most visited place on the planet, according to Michelle Ferrari, the documentary's writer.
"Unconventional History" plays like an episodic history series with a new crisis every week. The railroad retired the repair station. Recreational opportunities were attempted, including the world's sandiest golf courses. But the legalization of prostitution and gambling, instant marriage and pretty quick divorce offered forlorn attractions.
Then came Boulder Dam/Hoover Dam. Its parched, exhausted, celibate work force by the thousands in the early '30s made Vegas a weekend boomtown --boomier yet when Prohibition was repealed in 1933.
Then came military bases as World War II loomed. Simultaneously, the Mafia and related crime syndicates began to find gold in the desert. The founders of Las Vegas' glitter, glitz and big-time gambling were criminals in other cities but founding fathers and honored citizens in the Nevada town.
Then came World War II, more bases, postwar prosperity, the Cold War, the nuclear industry, a bigger airport --and even more mob involvement.
And then came official scrutiny. Like an adjunct to the witch hunts of the '40s and '50s, came a big, official, glaringly public investigation by Estes Kefauver, a Tennessee senator and presidential hopeful who was shocked --shocked --to find gambling happening in Las Vegas. It generated publicity of the kind the casinos could never have bought at any price. It was better than being banned in Boston. Citizens who had never considered visiting Las Vegas developed a profitable curiosity.
The far, far out community then began a precarious existence that regularly seemed to be rescued by divine intervention.
Of course, as viewers of "Las Vegas: An Unconventional History" will see in thrilling detail, the salvation was unlikely from any force honored in Sunday School. The remote oasis would be better dubbed, say, "Los Pecados" or "Las Culpas" --The Sins. The title of Part 1 of the "American Experience" presentation sums up what everyone knows: "Sin City."
Las Vegas is now as famous a world capital (yes) as it ever was. No one doesn't know the meaning of the slogan, "What happens here, stays here." A TV series is set there. Some 750 movies have been at least partially filmed there. Some 37 million tourists a year pass through Las Vegas, soaking up sun and fantasy, and leaving behind billions in hotels, restaurants, hookers' purses, wedding chapels and, by far most of all, casinos.
It is the most visited place on the planet, according to Michelle Ferrari, the documentary's writer.
"Unconventional History" plays like an episodic history series with a new crisis every week. The railroad retired the repair station. Recreational opportunities were attempted, including the world's sandiest golf courses. But the legalization of prostitution and gambling, instant marriage and pretty quick divorce offered forlorn attractions.
Then came Boulder Dam/Hoover Dam. Its parched, exhausted, celibate work force by the thousands in the early '30s made Vegas a weekend boomtown --boomier yet when Prohibition was repealed in 1933.
Then came military bases as World War II loomed. Simultaneously, the Mafia and related crime syndicates began to find gold in the desert. The founders of Las Vegas' glitter, glitz and big-time gambling were criminals in other cities but founding fathers and honored citizens in the Nevada town.
Then came World War II, more bases, postwar prosperity, the Cold War, the nuclear industry, a bigger airport --and even more mob involvement.
And then came official scrutiny. Like an adjunct to the witch hunts of the '40s and '50s, came a big, official, glaringly public investigation by Estes Kefauver, a Tennessee senator and presidential hopeful who was shocked --shocked --to find gambling happening in Las Vegas. It generated publicity of the kind the casinos could never have bought at any price. It was better than being banned in Boston. Citizens who had never considered visiting Las Vegas developed a profitable curiosity.