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What Are the Oldest Casinos in Las Vegas?
By Kevin LentzWriter at Casinos.US Updated: 05/03/2024Kevin has been involved in the gambling industry since the ‘80s. From winning tournaments to casino management, he’s ultimately done it all. Throughout the years, he’s written for various iGaming publications on topics such as the legal landscape of online casinos and strategies behind winning. His favorite game is blackjack.
Exploring the Oldest Casinos in Las Vegas While many Las Vegas visitors are only concerned about the newest and the brightest, there are still places you can get a glimpse into Las Vegas’s storied past. From the turn of the last century hotels to mob-built casinos, you can still find the history of this town peeking out if you know where to look.
What Are Some Of The Oldest Casinos in Las Vegas?
We are going to take a look at not just the oldest casinos in Las Vegas, but the oldest casinos in Nevada, as we take a stroll through the long history of gambling in Las Vegas. And while we will cover centuries of history, you can reach all of the spots we are going to discuss in only 20 minutes by car.
We will start with the oldest casino in Las Vegas, the Golden Gate downtown, and not to worry, we will talk about the El Cortez, the oldest casino in downtown Las Vegas that has been continuously operating. It is here we first start to see the influence of mob money in Sin City, and the subsequent building boom that starts with the Flamingo in the late 40s, but is soon followed by mega resort after mega resort financed by the Teamster’s pension funds.
And we won’t forget about the Railroad Pass out on the border with Boulder City, the oldest casino in Nevada. It’s worth the short drive just to see Nevada casino license number 4 hanging proudly on the wall.
Golden Gate, The Oldest Casino in Las Vegas
One of the oldest casinos in Las Vegas, the downtown Golden Gate Hotel and Casino has been run as a hotel since it opened in 1906. It is right off the Fremont Street experience.
While currently smack dab in the middle of one of the most famous nightlife areas in the world, this was once a dusty lot auctioned off for $1,700 in 1905, when the city was just getting started with building its downtown.
It managed to boast both a casino and hotel until 1909 when gambling was barred even in Nevada. Rooms were as high as $1 a night in those first years, and they managed to ride out both World Wars and the Great Depression by keeping customers first.
While it has seen a succession of owners in its almost 120 years, it has always kept the doors open except during major renovations. The casino returned in the early 1950s and has been expanded multiple times. While the 40 years without gaming takes away a bit from its title as the oldest casino, it was in fact the first that is still standing. And there is no doubt that it is the oldest hotel casino in Las Vegas as well.
Generations of Las Vegas visitors fondly remember it for its 50-cent shrimp cocktail. Unfortunately, while the hotel and casino managed to survive, we are sad to report that the world-famous shrimp cocktail did not, and it was discontinued back in 2020.
You would be excused for not realizing that this beautiful state-of-the-art hotel, with 14 suites and two penthouses as well, is the oldest casino in Las Vegas or that its glitzy glamourous casino and state-of-the-art sportsbook stands in a place where people have been wagering since not long after the end of World War II. But hey, what’s Vegas about, if not reinvention?
Railroad Pass, the Oldest Casino in Nevada
If you wish to see the oldest casino in Nevada, you’ll need to head southwest about 20 miles toward Boulder City. While not strictly in Las Vegas proper, this one is worth a visit, not for its 300-room hotel or six blackjack tables, but for its rich history.
As mentioned, casinos were outlawed in Nevada from 1909 until March 1931. By September, Rail Road Pass had Nevada Casino License #4 hanging on the wall and a long line of customers from nearby Boulder City beating on the doors. Most had gambling on their minds, but there was a speakeasy and other vices if one wished and knew the proper passwords.
Gambling was not legal then, nor is it now in Boulder City, which was filled with federal workers building the Hoover Dam. Even after Prohibition was repealed two years later, Boulder City only allowed 3.2% beer and no other alcohol, so they still had ample business in those early years. This would eventually be augmented by Arizona travelers coming and going through the area to get to Las Vegas.
While today it features a travel center and a Holiday Inn, hundreds of pictures of the old casino and bar, as they once stood, and of their customers still dot the walls. It is a place where any serious fan of casino history could spend an afternoon.
The Mythic El Cortez, One of the Oldest Casinos in Downtown Las Vegas
Another of the oldest and the best casinos in Las Vegas sits just a few blocks from the Golden Gate and nicely ties the prewar era of Las Vegas to its mob-fueled post-war era. The El Cortez has been in continuous operation since 1941, making it one of the oldest casinos in downtown Las Vegas. It proved an extremely popular spot almost from the beginning and soon caught the attention of some fellows from New York. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Gus Greenbaum who were some of Lucky Luciano’s top lieutenants in the Genovese crime family.
They bought the property in 1942, only to sell it back to its original owners in 1946 as they prepared to open the new Flamingo further out on the Strip. Meyer and Moe would go on to use mob money to buy out and invest in at least a dozen Vegas properties.
It would later be owned by another almost mythical figure in old Las Vegas history, Jackie Gaughan. While Gaughan would eventually own many casinos across Las Vegas Valley and, at one point, almost 25% of the land in downtown Las Vegas, as well as mentor a young Steve Wynn, he always thought of the El Cortez as his home, and he lived there until he died in 2014.
While often known as a dive for most of its seven decades and a place where there was literally sawdust on the floor for at least the first fifty years, Jackie never changed much despite his enormous wealth. It now has an all-suite hotel and a high-limit room, though you can still find many photos of its storied history on the wall. But that being said, I can’t help but wonder what Jackie would say about all this.
The Fabled Flamingo, Oldest Casino on the Strip
After the war, the whole world changed. The Depression came to an end, and the boys came home from far-off battlefields. The mob families from the East and Midwest who had gotten rich during the war realized that the Government wasn’t going to need their services anymore and that they would likely need to find new avenues for their operations.
Las Vegas ticked many boxes: legal gambling, cheap, widely available land, and only four hours from Los Angeles. While Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky got there first with the El Cortez and Fremont downtown, many more guys with mob connections soon followed. And they were headed for the Strip.
While Bugsy Siegel was brought in by another original owner, there is little doubt that everything about the original Flamingo was at Bugsy’s request. He financed it, planned it, and built it. And in what would become a Las Vegas Strip rite of passage, he brought it in way, way over budget—$6 million instead of $1 million. This may or may not have led to his tragic shooting just six months later.
But what he built was more than just another casino hotel. Heck, the original Flamingo barely had 100 rooms, not some 3000-room behemoth like they build today. What he built was a dream, a legacy, a vision of Vegas opulence, nightlife, and glamour that would set the tone for the next 80 years. It is not just another place to make a bet and get a room but a place where dreams come true. And as the oldest casino on the Las Vegas Strip, this grand old lady is still making dreams.
The Twilight of the Oldest Strip Casinos
Many more iconic casinos with dubious ownership would soon follow, many financed by the mob through the Teamsters Union pension funds. The Desert Inn, Stardust, The Dune, Tropicana, Riviera, and the Sands were all built by mob money in the 1950s when their influence was at its height.
While most of these were demolished in the ’90s to make way for multi-billion casino resorts built now with money from private equity firms and stock tenders, only the Tropicana and the Sahara currently remain from that mob era of the 50s. However, the Tropicana is scheduled to end business in April 2024 to make way for a major league baseball park. Strictly speaking, the Sahara was closed from 2004 to 2011 and completely gutted. Caesars, Circus Circus, and several other mob-built casino enterprises from the 60s still survive.
Conclusion
So if you are interested in casino history from a bygone era, a quick stroll can take you from the oldest casino in Las Vegas, The Golden Gate at 118 years and still going strong. Then down past a few blocks of the Fremont Street Experience to where you can find the El Cortez a pre-second World War artifact that holds the title for the longest continuously operating casino in Las Vegas, and one of the oldest casinos in downtown Las Vegas.
Then, a quick drive out to the Flamingo. She is the oldest Strip Casino, the first and soon-to-be-last mob-built operating casino left from the heyday of the mob’s influence in the late 40s and 1950s. And then, for a real touch of nostalgia, you can head down to Boulder City, where the Railroad Pass stands as the oldest continually operated casino in the entire state of Nevada, and soak up its Prohibition and Depression-era vibes.
All of these beautiful old casinos are a glimpse back into the bygone era of Las Vegas, and with the quickening pace of change in the gambling capital of the world, you should check them out before they are gone too. As the digital world becomes more and more relevant, you can also visit some of the best poker sites in Nevada.