What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas!

Las Vegas Trivia – fascinating, interesting facts about
Las Vegas, what made the city famous, little
know facts about Las Vegas.

• • The famous “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign was originally designed by Betty Willis in 1959. The WELCOME letter on the sign were supposed to represent silver dollars and were incorporated into the sign because Nevada is known as the Silver State.  However, it is surprising the sign was never copyrighted.
  • The longest-running show was the Follies Bergere, started at the Tropicana in 1959 and was the longest running.
  • The Stardust was the first casino to include a sports book.
  • The Dunes was the first casino to feature topless showgirls in a show called Minsky’s Follies.
  • The Golden Gate opened in 1906, in what is now downtown Las Vegas, making it the first hotel and casino to open in the city.
  • El Rancho was the first hotel resort built on the Strip. It had 63 rooms.
  • Slot machines were initially created as a diversion for women  companions
    of male gamblers who were busy at the tables.
  • Slot machines typically earn 60% or more of a casino’s earnings.
  • The Stratosphere tower is 1,149 feet high and is the tallest free-standing observation structure in the nation.
  • The four hotels at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd. and Tropicana (MGM  Grand, Tropicana, New York-New York and Excalibur) have more hotel rooms than all of San Francisco.
  • The MGM Grand is the nation’s largest hotel with over 5,000 rooms.
  • Of the ten largest hotels in the world, nine of them are in Las Vegas.
  • Las Vegas is the 5th most popular vacation destination in the world.
  • The Las Vegas airport, McCarran, is the 8th busiest in the world.
  • 30.5 million people, on average, visit Las Vegas every year.
  • In 1899 Charles Fey invented a slot machine named the Liberty Bell. The device became the model for all slots to follow.
  • The Reno Ice Pavilion is a 16,000-square-foot rink once dismantled and moved to Reno from Atlantic City, New Jersey.
  • Bugsy Siegel named his Las Vegas casino “The Flamingo” for the long legs of his showgirl sweetheart, Virginia Hill.
  • The Imperial Palace on the Las Vegas strip is the nation’s first off-airport airline baggage check-in service.
  • Bertha was a performing elephant that entertained for 37 years at John Ascuaga’s Nugget casino located in Sparks. She was 48 years old when she died.
  • There were 16,067 slots in Nevada in 1960. In 1999 Nevada had 205,726 slot machines, one for every 10 residents.
  • In 1931 the Pair-O-Dice Club was the first casino to open on Highway 91, the future Las Vegas Strip.
  • In March 1931 Governor Fred Balzar signed into law the bill legalizing gambling in the state.
  • Once the highest concrete dam in the world, Hoover Dam offers guided tours and a museum of artifacts of the construction and its workers.
  • Construction of the Nevada State Capitol located in Carson City was proposed on April 14, 1870.
    
  • Carson City was one of the smallest state capitals in the country.
  • In Tonopah Nevada, the young Jack Dempsey was once the bartender and the bouncer at the still popular Mispah Hotel and Casino. Famous lawman and folk hero Wyatt Earp once kept the peace in the town.
  • The first community college in Nevada opened in Elko in 1967. Great Basin College was the forerunner of a statewide system associated with the University of Nevada.
  • Las Vegas was named after hidden underground wells by Rafael Rivera in 1821. Las Vegas means “the meadow.” 
  • Most of the state is desert but the Sierra Nevada mountain range near Reno and the Ruby Mountains near Elko has snow for half the year.
  • Locals use terms like The Sagebrush State, The Silver State, and The Battle Born State as nicknames for Nevada.
  • Nevada is the seventh largest state with 110,540 square miles, 85% of them federally owned including the secret Area 51 near the little town of Rachel.
  • Nevada has more mountain ranges than any other state, with its highest point at the 13,145 foot top of Boundary Peak near the west-central border.
  • Grammatically, the proper term for the mountains is the Sierra Nevada not the Sierras. Robert Conrad almost called one of his television series High Sierra Rangers but changed it to High Mountain Rangers.
  • Wayne Newton owns a home in the Las Vegas area, and it was a real location for the film “Vegas Vacation.”
  • The longest running show in Las Vegas is the Follies Bergere at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino. It opened in 1959.
  • The production numbers in “Showgirls” were written specifically for the Paul Verhoeven film and shot in the Horizon Hotel at Lake Tahoe. The bulk of the movie used locations located at the Luxor and the Forum Shops at Caesars.

• You see the name Hughes on numerous locations and developments. Howard Hughes bought up considerable Nevada property before he died in 1976, including the following hotels and casinos: Castaways, Desert Inn, Frontier, Landmark, Sands, Silver Slipper, and Harold’s Club. Part of the Hughes legend was recounted in Jonathan Demme’s “Melvin and Howard.”
• Nevada is the largest gold-producing state in the nation. It is second in the world behind South Africa.
• The state has about 50,000 miles of paved road, much of it featured in films like “Vanishing Point,” “Breakdown,” “Rain man,” and “Lethal Weapon 4.”
• Hoover Dam, the largest single public works project in the history of the United States, contains 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete, which is enough to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. The dam face was used in an amazing stunt for Roland Emerich’s “Universal Soldier” and has been seen in such films as “Viva Las Vegas” and “Fools Rush In.”
• The state’s Highway 50, known as the Loneliest Highway in America, received its name from “Life” magazine in 1986. There are few road stops in the 287 mile stretch between Ely and Fernley.
• Frank Sinatra once owned the Cal-Neva at Lake Tahoe’s Crystal Bay. It is possible to stand in both Nevada and California inside Cal-Neva’s building.
• Nevada tribes include the Shoshone, Washoe and Paiute. Tribal lands have been used in such film projects as “Misery,” and “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”
• The Las Vegas Strip is actually under jurisdiction of Clark County and can be seen in just about any film set in the city.
• Nevada is the only state with an entire museum devoted to the life and time of entertainer Liberace.
• Area 51 is acknowledged with State Route 375 officially christened “The Extraterrestrial Highway” in a ceremony featuring the director and cast of the movie “Independence Day.” The highway runs between Alamo and Tonopah. There is a tiny restaurant stop at the Little Ale’ Inn at Rachel.
• The only Nevada lake with an outlet to the sea is man made Lake Mead.
• Camels were used as pack animals in Nevada as late as 1870.
• To drive from Los Angeles, California to Reno, Nevada the direction traveled is to the west.
• Construction worker Hard Hat’s were first invented specifically for workers on the Hoover Dam in 1933.
• Las Vegas has more hotel rooms than any other place on earth.
• Las Vegas has the majority of the largest hotels in the world.
• The longest morse code telegram ever sent was the Nevada state constitution. Sent from Carson City to Washington D.C. in 1864. The transmission must have taken several hours.
• Virginia City is the home of the Nevada Gambling Museum.
• This clever slogan was actually the product of a marketing campaign by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA). Originally called the “What happens here, stays here” campaign transformed into the catchier “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” slogan.
• There is approximately 120,000 weddings each year.