Sin City - The Men Who Made Vegas

Much like Rome, Las Vegas wasn’t built in a day.

- Jack Sheehan

Unlike the gamblers who seeded its meteoric rise, Las Vegas has overcome the odds consistently for 70 years. Once an outpost in the desert controlled by organized crime—rumored to have removed truckloads of uncounted cash from casinos in the still of the night—today an acre of the four-mile-long Strip is worth $10 million. Tourism numbers are at all-time highs.

The roll call of men who built Las Vegas dates back to the 1940s and ’50s, when shady characters like Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz, and Benny Binion became infatuated with the possibilities of settling in the only legal gambling center in the country and developing a seedy adult getaway. In the 1960s, it was billionaire Howard Hughes and banker E. Parry Thomas who made things happen. Then visionaries Michael Milken, Kirk Kerkorian, and Steve Wynn raised the bar again in the 1970s. These men, who make up an A-list of gaming leaders, were as diverse and colorful as the gambling palaces they built and managed. Following are some of the extraordinary circumstances that allowed a dusty outpost in the middle of nowhere to become one of the brightest spots on Earth. It is by any measure remarkable that just 70 years after hotels were first constructed there, the city is considered one of the top tourist destinations in the world, and home to 614,000 residents who lead remarkably normal lives.

If Disneyland was built as a place of adventure and escape for kids, it’s only logical that somewhere in America there would be a special place where adults could have their fun without the stories following them home.

Maybe that’s why Las Vegas emerged in the middle of a desert.

Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel