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The Las Vegas Trip
The Clubs - Strip History - Las Vegas Buffets
The Las Vegas Strip (also known as The Strip) is 4 mi (6.7 km) of Las Vegas Boulevard South and has been designated an All-American Road. Only part of The Strip is located within the city limits of Las Vegas, Nevada: the section north of Sahara Ave. The section south of Sahara Ave. is in Clark County's unincorporated Township of Paradise, Nevada. However, The Strip is often what people mean when they say they are going to Las Vegas. Many of the largest hotel, casino and resort properties in the world are located on The Strip. Over the years, Las Vegas Boulevard South has been called Arrowhead Highway, "Salt Lake Highway", U.S. Highway 91, and "Los Angeles Highway". The Strip was reportedly named by police officer Guy McAfee, after his hometown's Sunset Strip, in Los Angeles.
Vegas Strip History
The first casino to be built on Highway 91 was the Pair-o-Dice Club in 1931; the first on what is today's Strip was the El Rancho Vegas, opening on April 3, 1941 with 63 rooms and standing for almost 20 years before being destroyed by fire in 1960. Its success spawned a second hotel on what would become The Strip, the Hotel Last Frontier, in 1942. The Flamingo opened a few years later, on December 26, 1946.
In 1968, Kirk Kerkorian purchased the Flamingo and hired Sahara Hotels Vice President Alex Shoofey as President. Alex Shoofey brought along 33 of Sahara's top executives. The Flamingo was used to train future employees of the International Hotel, which was under construction. Opening in 1969, the International Hotel with 1,512 rooms, would become the largest hotel in the world, and begin the era of mega-resorts. The International is known as the Las Vegas Hilton today.
The first MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, also a Kerkorian property, opened in 1973 with 2,084 rooms. At the time, this was the largest hotel in the world by number of rooms. On November 21, 1980, the MGM Grand suffered the worst resort fire in the history of Las Vegas, killing 87 people as a result of electrical problems. It reopened eight months later. In 1986, Kerkorian sold the MGM Grand to Bally Manufacturing and it was renamed Bally's.
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