We already busted the myth perpetuated past that scene inward the 1991 film, Bugsy, in which Robert Penn Warren Beatty walked come out into the innocent desert and had a vision. No, mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel didn’t create the Las Vegas Strip. He didn’t even out create the Flamingo Hotel. Which brings us to the myth at hand. The real story of the foremost gambling casino to occupy the Strip is known to only a few nonhistorians. And it’s far best than the ane inwards Bugsy.
The Las Vegas Strip, as UNLV history professor Michael William Green told Casino.org, “has a founding mother, non a founding father.”
A whopping quartet casinos, 2 of which were fully fledged resorts, flap the Flamingo to Highway 91, as the main road from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles was known in 1946. The for the first time was opened a total 15 years before by Alice Morris, whose nickname, “Ma,” was stunningly prescient.
The Real Pecking Order
“Ma” Esther Morris opened the Red River Rooster — non to live confused with the Las Vegas swingers society operating below that nominate since the 1980s — on Nov. 26, 1930, on 12 acres where the due north gate of The Mirage now stands. At first, it was a nightclub featuring trip the light fantastic marathons, live all-girl bands, and dining. (A lily-livered dinner party would exercise set you support $1.)
There was no more play yet, at least not of the effectual variety. As unknown as this sounds, it had been outlawed in Las Vegas since Sept. 30, 1910.
Amid the moral see the light of the Progressive Era of the betimes 20th century, Battle Born State prohibited to the highest degree forms of gambling,” Green explained. “It didn’t get legal over again until Governor Fred Balzar signed Assembly Bill 98 on March 19, 1931.”
Anxious to work the unexampled revenue stream, but having no more see with gambling, Robert Morris did what the owners of many other Las Vegas clubs did at the time: she enlisted the advice of a play expert. And who were the gambling experts indorse then?
Mob Rules
Morris “Goldie” Goldsworth was lured to Las Vegas past the hope of illegal play profits in an untapped market. A rising participant inward the LA play racquet at the time, he would live found beaten to death by a cock inward the rearward sit of his gondola on Oct. 16, 1958. The LA medical examiner called the gunshot wounds to his chief “only superficial.” He was 52.
Back when he was still breathing, Goldie in agreement(p) to exercise set upwardly and course Morris’ play procedure in interchange for an undocumented cutting off of the profits. He applied for a small licence — for a blackjack tabularize and trey slot machines — and on April 1, 1931, the Red River Rooster became the first-class honours degree Joe Clark County establishment on Highway 91 to take in a gaming certify under the new law.
The Red River Rooster also became the for the first time Las Vegas Strip cassino to lose its gaming license, because serving intoxicant was another thing that was, surprisingly, against the law of nature at the time. It would remain so across the US until the repeal of Prohibition on Dec. 5, 1933.
Alcohol had been usable at the Red Rooster since the solar day it opened. In Feb 1931, Prohibition agents yet dropped inwards to publication Robert Morris a warning. And she complied, temporarily. But on May 18, 1931, the Red Rooster received a 2d call in from the feds that wasn’t so friendly. They arrested Esther Morris and her husband, who were found guilty, granted probation, and fined $500.
Goldie wasn’t arrested during the raid. But when he applied to renew the Red Rooster’s gaming license on July 7, 1931, it was denied due to the previous liquor violation.
Other Pre-Flamingo Strip Casinos
Like the Red River Rooster, the Pair O’ Dice opened as a nightclub and eating house inward 1930, serving alcoholic drink below the table. Unlike the Red Rooster, however, owners Frank and Angelina Detra ne'er got busted. They also applied for a gaming license, but didn’t obtain one until May 1931, a month after the Red Rooster was issued theirs.
The El Rancho Vegas opened inwards Apr 1941. It had the largest cassino on Highway 91, with 70 one-armed bandit machines and quaternion tabular array games. It also had its possess swimming pocket billiards and 63-room hotel. So, it tin truly follow called the first-class honours degree resort on the Las Vegas Strip. As far as casinos go, however, it was No. 3.
In 1941, the Pair O’ Dice was sold and incorporated into the Hotel Last Frontier. Its 1942 grand curtain raising made it the 4th functionary gambling casino on the Strip, and the secondment resort.
The Flamingo Hotel didn’t opened until Dec. 26, 1946, as the future tense Las Vegas Strip’s fifth gambling casino and third resort.
Red Rooster Crows On
The Red River Rooster’s timeline continued after losing its gambling casino license. In 1933, Charles Joseph Clark County gave Morris’s business organisation a unexampled living past granting it a trip the light fantastic toe hall license. After Prohibition was repealed later that year, the county followed upwardly with a beer-only pot liquor license. Though the Red River Rooster suffered a discharge inward July 1933, Esther Morris rebuilt and reopened it on Dec. 30 of that same year. It remained pop throughout World War II.
In 1947, William Morris sold the Red River Rooster to former vaudeville star Grace Hayes. By then, a motel, the Sans Souci (French for without care) had been added to the property. In 1962, it would live razed to create The Castaways.
Like so many former vaudevillians, Rutherford B. Hayes found herself unable to get the transition to big-screen stardom. The vocaliser and actress had managed to nab simply two leading roles, playing a version of herself inward 1936’s Maid for a Day and inwards 1941’s Zis Boom Bah.
So, Helen Hayes enacted her Plan B. Exploiting her fading public figure recognition, she opened the Grace Hayes Lodge inward Sherman Oaks, Calif. inwards 1938. After deciding to relocate both herself and her society to Las Vegas, she paid Robert Morris $15K for the Red Rooster and the 12 acres it sat on, renaming the guild after herself and having a cattle farm house built slow it as her residence.
The order remained successful with President Hayes at the helm, attracting many of the town’s too soon movers and shakers. In a 1981 interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hayes estimated that Leslie Howard Howard Robard Hughes was inwards the put at least leash times a week.
“I don’t cognize what I served him,” Rutherford Birchard Hayes told the newspaper. “I cognise i served him a drink. I mixed a drink. He didn’t maintenance what it was. He ne'er drank it, and he never paid me for a fuddle inwards his life.”
Growing tired of operating a club, Rutherford B. Hayes leased it to others. When Willie Martello, amend known for operating houses of gambling and whoredom inward Searchlight, Nev., took o'er inward 1949, he changed its identify to Willie Martello’s Red Rooster. That’s because its regulars ne'er stopped-up(a) referring to the social club by its former name.
After Martello, the gild continued to run under a revolving door of different owners and new names. These included the Hi-Ho Club, The Patio, The Rendezvous, and finally, the Grace Helen Hayes Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge again. The bludgeon closed in(p) inwards 1957 and was torn land inward 1959 by Standard Oil (which became Mobil Oil inward 1966). President Hayes had leased the ground to the companionship to surface a gas station.
Hayes Stays
Hayes continued living inward the cattle ranch house on her property. It eventually made story as the shoemaker's last remaining private place on the Strip. She was united inward Vegas by her boy and daughter-in-law, entertainers Peter Jenny Lind Helen Hayes and The Virgin Healy, who were actively involved in the community.
In 1987, Steve Wynn paid Rutherford B. Hayes $2M for her put up and the Mobil place where the Red River Rooster formerly stood. As parting of the deal, she lived come out her last days inward a munificent rooms at Wynn’s Golden Nugget resort downtown. Ill health forced Rutherford B. Hayes to participate the Las Vegas Convalescent Center, where she died at eld 93 inward 1989. That’s the same yr Wynn opened The Mirage on the site of her former home.
On almost the exact pip where the Red River Rooster in one case stood, Wynn built The Mirage’s to the highest degree famous public attraction. Sometime in 2024, his fake volcano is readiness to live razed past Hard John Rock International, which purchased The Mirage utmost twelvemonth for $1.1B. The resort’s unexampled possessor intends to erect a 36-story guitar-shaped hotel tower in its place.
Since tidings of the volcano’s impending demolition broke, Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers experience taken to societal media to quetch most Las Vegas’ lack of prize for its history. What’s risible is that they consider the volcano is the most historic thing that once tenanted this site.
Whenever you foremost assure that guitar tower climbing toward the sky, know that it is rising from the rattling ashes of Las Vegas history.
“Remember the pioneers who came first,” Green River said, “in this case, Grace Rutherford B. Hayes and her predecessor, Alice Morris, the founding overprotect of the Las Vegas Strip.”