Who Put the Fabulous in Las Vegas?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:17

This week we're celebrating the 120th birthday of the most fabulous city in the world. Since its humble beginnings as a stopover for railroad workers, it's grown into the entertainment capital of the world.

See a show, gamble, get married and eat the best food in the biggest hotels. Then wake up and do it all over again. Sin City got its name for a reason. But in this episode, I want to find out who put the fabulous in Las Vegas.

Welcome to America, a history podcast.

I'm Liam Heffernan and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places and the events that make the USA what it is today. To discuss this, I am joined by a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

He's the author of Nevada A History of the Silver State and the co author of Las Vegas A Centennial History. And we'll put links to both of those in the show notes for you to enjoy afterwards. A huge fabulous neon lit welcome to Professor Michael Green.

Michael Green: 00:01:38

Well, thank you. I wish I was neon lit myself.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:44

Yeah. Do you know what, I'm going to preface this conversation by saying I've been to Vegas a few times myself.

I've never had the pleasure of visiting the Neon Graveyard, which I'm told is wonderful.

Michael Green: 00:01:55

Oh, it's a terrific museum.

And one of the things I find interesting about Las Vegas, which you might think I would as a historian and as someone who grew up here, is we have some excellent historical museums, including the Neon Museum and the Mob Museum and the Atomic Testing Museum. So there are lots of places to go besides the tables, folks.

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:15

Yeah, absolutely. I've been to the Mob Museum, much to my wife's annoyance. I spent far too long in there and I was fascinated with everything. But yeah, I agree.

You know, there's so much to do in Vegas beyond just gamble, although that is fun as well. But let's bring it back to the start.

You know, I think one of the things that a lot of people maybe don't understand enough about is that the history, you know, behind the Strip and everything that we know and love today about Vegas. So I wonder if you can just give us a bit of a whistle stop tour over, you know, when and why Vegas was founded in the first place.

Michael Green: 00:02:51

Well, whistle stop will be an appropriate term since the railroad was so important.

Vegas area was the winter of: 1829

army Topographical Corps and literally puts Las Vegas on the map, since it was a map making quest, among other things. But the first Euro American settlers in Las Vegas were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

In: 1855

Indeed, the springs that are now visible again at the Springs Preserve in the heart of Las Vegas were the motivation for people to stop at this desert oasis. Now, members of the Mormon Church left after a couple of years, partly because of something.

My late undergraduate advisor, Ralph Roske, who taught me a lot of Las Vegas history, used to say that the most important person in the history of Las Vegas was Willis Carrier because he invented the air conditioner. If not for him, we're not here.

That said, there were other reasons Mormons left, and there were a few ranchers in the area and Native Americans certainly until just after the beginning of the 20th century.

And at that time, Senator William Andrews Clark, a Montana copper baron, and Edward Henry Harriman, who controlled the Union Pacific Railroad, began a race to try to build a railroad through this area that was going from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City.

And this is fairly typical that we're between la, where we have these very close historical connections, and Salt Lake City, where the Mormon Church has been so important to the history of this area. Eventually, Clark and Harriman came together, formed a mutual agreement, if you will, and the result was that the railroad was completed.

Clark would operate, would be a 50, 50 split.

,: 1905

Now, there was already a small town site across the tracks to the west that was not under railroad control and has survived to this day, but never entirely successfully. It became the segregated part of town, mostly for African Americans, but also for other people of color.

And today has a vibrant black and Hispanic community there. But because the railroad was the main employer and because the railroad controlled the water, the Las Vegas town site is considered the beginning.

,: 1905

Liam Heffernan: 00:06:07

It's so fascinating though. So we essentially have the Mormons to thank initially for kind of putting it on the map. Right.

Michael Green: 00:06:14

Yes.

And the irony here is that today we think of the Mormon Church as a conservative institution, but in the 19th century, it was widely seen as a group of outlaws, polygamy and that sort of thing. They also grew out of the Second Great Awakening in the United States, which. And the idea of utopian socialist communities.

You see that in how the church develops. So when people say, gee, isn't it funny that Las Vegas with this reputation, the first Euro American settlers were Mormons.

Well, actually, it kind of works out.

Liam Heffernan: 00:06:49

Yeah. And actually, from what you've said, Vegas always kind of was a bit of a holiday destination.

Maybe not in the way that we understand now, but it was that stopover for people on their way to somewhere else. Right.

Michael Green: 00:07:04

You know, I like to say that Las Vegas began as a place to stop and eventually became a place to go.

And this little water spot in the desert was very attractive to travelers, who by then were exhausted and possibly starving and definitely needed their thirst quenched. And in the early days of the railroad, that was still largely the case.

This was a division point on the railroad, one of several, where they would do repairs to the railroad cars. So there was a logic in having a couple of hotels right by the depot, which there were. One of them is still standing.

Las Vegas area. It opened in: 1906

And even in the 19th century, the main ranch in town, run by a woman named Helen Stewart, was, in a sense, kind of like a B and B. If you were on the trail and needed a place to stay, you could pay Mrs.

Stewart to use a bedroom, and she cooked for you, and she welcomed having people show up to talk to. It was pretty lonely out here for her. So even then, this was a place that travelers came to know.

Liam Heffernan: 00:08:15

It's interesting because I've seen.

I mean, I'm jumping ahead a little bit here, but I've seen these old pictures of Vegas even as relatively recently as, like the 50s and 60s and the hotels then.

Even though that was when Vegas was starting to emerge into what we know today, the hotel still looks like that kind of bed and breakfast sort of inn, with a sort of, you know, a couple of slot machines bolted on the side. So it was. It's. It's taken a long time, hasn't it, for it to become more than just a bit of a desert town?

Michael Green: 00:08:49

It has been an interesting evolution in the sense that we think of Las Vegas as having a much shorter history. And of course, if we go back there Is the lengthy history, but it is very much a city of the 20th century.

And there have been growth spurts, but all along, there's been a lot of growth. The population of Las Vegas doubled or almost doubled in every census of the 20th century, which tells you that something was happening here.

And really, from: 1905

And at that time, locals began saying, well, we need to do something else. What about tourism? We still have the railroad coming through here. A federal highway is being built through here. We have a fairgrounds.

We have good weather a lot of the year. This is the era when, in the United States, if you were unhealthy in some way, they would say, well, go to the west, Go to the dry heat.

be what these dreamers of the: 1920

One is essentially a month in: 1931

It's being built to provide cheap water and power to southern California, mainly, and Nevada gets very little of the water. But to people in Nevada, this was an opportunity. They didn't feel they needed a lot of water, but it would provide employment.

It would give them kind of a justification for their existence, if you will.

t to mention related to March: 1931

And hundreds of thousands of people in the depression era who have the money or at least can travel a little bit, are coming here to see this incredible project. And the federal government built a community to house the workers near the dam, but prohibited all of the fun stuff.

,: 1931

One of them reduced the residency requirement for divorce from three months to six weeks. This inspired a lot of people to look down on Nevada, it's so easy to get a divorce. What are you doing to the marital contract, etc.

But it inspires tourists. A few years later, Nevada eliminates the blood test requirement for getting married. You just show up and say, we want to get married.

age industry. The Same day in: 1931

And a lot of people think, oh, Nevada's just responding to the Depression, legalizing a vice to regulate it. The state didn't regulate it at first.

The main motivator was get people to visit the state, see how wonderful it is, and maybe they'll invest money and move here and stay here. So, in a sense, the tourism and the gambling would be secondary to the ultimate goal.

But that said, it becomes a major industry for Nevada, and that is really the first turning point where these measures, including a federal project, not intended this way, promote tourism.

Liam Heffernan: 00:12:54

It feels a bit deliberate, though, that you've got. You've got this whole workforce that can't do all of this stuff in their hometown.

And then, hey, here's a little town just across the road where you can spend your wages, come over and have a gamble and, you know, get married if you want.

Michael Green: 00:13:12

Well, if you visit Boulder City and Hoover Dam, the minute you cross the Boulder City city limits, there is a casino. It was there right after dam construction started. It's still there. Of course, it's been rebuilt and renovated.

But I did the oral history of a lifelong Nevadan who grew up in Caliente, a small town north of here. And he had Mormon family from Salt Lake who would visit and make disparaging remarks. And when they visited Salt Lake, they'd hear the same remarks.

And. And Ralph's father one time finally said, all right, get in the car. We're going to downtown Salt Lake.

I'm going to show you more vice than we've got in the entire state of Nevada. You can always find vice. You can always find whatever it is that you want entertaining you.

Liam Heffernan: 00:14:00

And I guess I feel like we could talk a lot about how the pros and cons of Nevada kind of embracing that and sort of being able to wrap controls around that. But, you know, maybe. Maybe that's a separate podcast. But before we.

We dive into the whole gambling side of things, because we're going to have to, let's talk about the marriage thing, because, you know, Vegas for a long time, and to an extent still is known as the. The wedding capital of the world. People come from all over to, to get married there.

And you know, in fact my, my in laws many years ago went and got married by Elvis in the, in the chapel. So you know, it's a world famous destination I guess. How did that happen?

Michael Green: 00:14:46

For the record, my parents came here to get married and then moved here. It happens in part for the reasons related to the divorce law.

And let's face it, there are some people who when they get divorced are thinking of a remarriage. And Nevada itself changing its laws to make it easier to get married, not to require a blood test.

My parents were, I don't know, 29th cousins, 32 times removed or something or other and they did not have to take a blood test. I like to joke, that's why I look the way I do. But that said, they had to swear to someone from the sheriff's office that they were not related. Okay.

Then they get married. So it's easier to get married.

This happens the change in law as World War II is coming when there is a tendency on some people's parts to want a quickie marriage. And then there's also the fact that if you want to get married here, there are other things to do once you've married.

But also local government designed the system for it to be easy for you to marry. Old cute story here.

There would be one justice of the peace, that justice of the peace usually lived at the downtown courthouse year round 24, 7 because JPS would be called on to perform marriages. And usually a couple gets married and is happy and will give some money. So there was an informal rule.

If you were justice of the peace, you were not to serve more than 12 year term because you'd made all the money you deserved to make and it was time to give somebody else a chance. And then in turn wedding chapels become a major business.

Wedding chapels on the strip itself in the downtown area near where you get the marriage license and wedding tourism becomes important. You mentioned the Elvis themed wedding. There are other kinds of weddings you can do. We have drive through weddings.

There was a story published here recently story published here recently about a woman who runs a wedding chapel and she put up a sign because of two celebrities who each came in there. Michael Jordan and Joan Collins. Says Michael Jordan and Joan Collins got married here. Now he said I never knew they were dating.

But they advertise it, they promote it, they encourage it. And this is a matter of other places not jumping on this bandwagon to the same degree. It's similar to gambling.

Nevada had a monopoly on legalized gambling for nearly half a century. Now you can gamble legally in 48 of the 50 states.

Liam Heffernan: 00:17:21

I do wonder, though. You know, obviously there was this element of Vegas being a bit of a tourist trap, and they.

They leaned into that with, you know, the legalization of gambling and making it really easy to get married. But do you think anyone back then really understood or. Or expected Vegas to become what it is today?

Michael Green: 00:17:45

I don't think people then expected a metropolis of two and a quarter million people with 150,000 hotel rooms and all of these major mega resorts up and down the street. No, I think they expected it to be bigger and better than it was. Two stories that don't go back that far.

I had a friend who was personally invited by his old buddy Benjamin Siegel to the opening of the Flamingo. And he told me that Siegel said to him that night, buy land. There will be a million people here.

Well, the Flamingo was not necessarily even Bugsy's idea. And we are cautious about referring to the visionary mobster, but there were people who looked at this and said, it's going to get bigger.

te of Israel fight its war in: 1948

And when he was dying in the late 80s, his son was driving him around and said something like, I bet you never thought you'd see this. And his son told me that his father said, oh, yeah, I knew this would happen. And Brian Greenspun looked at his father and said, you're lying.

Or words to that effect. And Hank replied, no, I knew it would happen, but I thought it would be your grandchildren who'd see it. So there is hope.

There are some crazy ideas floated and there are some crazy things tried that seemed crazy at the time and turned out not to be. But something like this, no, they didn't envision this.

Liam Heffernan: 00:19:47

You mentioned Bugsy. And we'll touch on the Mob and their involvement in building up what we now know as the Strip.

But Bugsy was not taken seriously by many people like he was. He ran massively over budget on the Flamingo. He was an outlier in his vision for what the Flamingo could be.

So, you know, there weren't many people, even when the Flamingo was being built and the Strip was born, that really thought Vegas would become what it is now?

Michael Green: 00:20:25

tion began on the Flamingo in: 1945

It's the highway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. And they were down closer to the city of Las Vegas. And both of them were very nice, but smaller, western themed.

And what the Flamingo was to be was something different. A luxury hotel modeled on the idea of places like the Fontainebleau in Miami. And Siegel may not have been the originator.

There is a very, very strong argument for a Hollywood businessman named Billy Wilkerson. And the mob museum has the rare case of a signed document involving a mobster where Siegel and Wilkerson are signing an agreement.

And I think the Siegel faction would say that Wilkerson was his front man until he could get in there. And the Wilkerson faction says that it was Wilkerson's idea and he lost the money to build it.

And Siegel had access to money that Wilkerson couldn't get. I am inclined more toward Wilkerson, but fine. Siegel wanted to build a luxury hotel.

He wanted to go legit, if you will, within the limits of legitimacy. And today we look at the flamingo costing $6 million with cost overruns.

And how we defined luxury in: 1946

And the Flamingos ultimate success was kind of a trigger for the rest of organized crime because they could make money here, and they could do it legally, and they could use their legal earnings to fund their illegal activities. But the result is that we end up with a strip of what would be called, in the 40s and 50s, luxury hotel casinos.

Liam Heffernan: 00:22:24

I mean, from my slightly ignorant understanding of Vegas history, it really does feel like the Strip wouldn't even exist, Certainly not in any form we'd recognize if it wasn't for the mob.

And, you know, of course, there was a lot of criminal activity underlying, you know, what they were doing, no matter how legitimate the casinos themselves were. But did it kind of take that in order for the Vegas we love to exist?

Michael Green: 00:22:52

I think it did.

I think you had to have professionals, people who came from the gambling world, and that meant the illegal gambling world from elsewhere, and they had access to at least some capital. Gambling then was not something that legitimate people were involved in.

In the mid-: 1950

Then you throw in that there's a pretty good chance, if I may do one of my bad impressions, that if a casino operator comes in, he might say, hey, I need a loan. And the banker says, well, it's 5% interest. No, it isn't. It's what I say it is the image of the Godfather or whoever.

And they wanted to be treated like legitimate businessmen, and this bank treated them that way, and they were able to get loans. Now, that said, some were more visionary than others, some were more capable than others.

Siegel may have had a vision, and I think he did have some vision. But in the mob, you had, historically, what they might call the muscle and the silk glove men. The silk glove men were types like Meyer Lansky.

They might give the order for the muscle, but they knew how to move money around. I think Siegel wanted to migrate from muscle to silk glove. Whether he could is another matter. But you had mob businessmen who saw the opportunity.

And in a sense, if you look at it like your favorite professional football team, and I'm using the European spelling of football, Manchester United didn't start really as Manchester United. It had to develop. And that's what we see here.

Liam Heffernan: 00:25:04

Yeah, I mean, it feels very much like the Vegas casinos that were. That were built and run by the mobs were, in a lot of ways, legitimate businesses.

But they were doing a lot of, you know, they were then going, you know, taking the cash to the back and then skimming the profits and doing a lot of illegal stuff with the money they were getting through the door. And they did it kind of.

It kind of relied on the authorities and the politicians running Vegas to turn a blind eye to all of that stuff so that they could keep getting the money and the regulations to grow those casinos. Right.

Michael Green: 00:25:39

ination because Nevada in the: 1930

We had a lean and mean government. Well, the problem was that then when you get the gaming industry, there aren't enough people to regulate them.

It isn't even a blind eye necessarily, as not even having an eye. And it's only later, as that apparatus expands, that we see real regulation and then in turn real action against the skimming that went on.

bought the Flamingo Hotel in: 1967

And apparently the state called him in and said, what are you doing that's so different? You're reporting bigger profits than we've ever seen before. And it hit them. Kirkorian wasn't skimming. The mob skimmed.

Liam Heffernan: 00:26:48

Yeah.

Michael Green: 00:26:49

And there's a story an attorney told me where he runs into a mobster at the airport. He says, where are you going? The guy says, detroit. And the attorney says, when you coming back? The guy said, tonight.

Well, another attorney said he was going somewhere for his transfusion. He said, I didn't think he meant a blood transfusion. So there's some money moving around that shouldn't be moving around.

Liam Heffernan: 00:27:07

Yeah, yeah. But okay.

That kind of brings me on to, I guess the late 20th century, sort of turn of the 21st in this shift away from the mob's Vegas to people like Kurt Kakorian, Steve Wynne, these kind of business tycoons who came in, saw the opportunity and really leveled up the Strip with these kind of huge mega resorts. How easy was that transition?

Because I'm going to make an assumption that the mob probably didn't leave Vegas quietly or easily unless they were losing money.

Michael Green: 00:27:44

They did not leave quietly or easily.

s and since in: 1969

And before that, everyone who owned a share of a hotel casino had to be licensed, which made it impossible for a corporation on the New York Stock Exchange with say, who knows how many stockholders. And they hoped that this would force the mob out.

Well, Howard Hughes came here and he was buying out mob owned hotel casinos, but he kept the same people operating them, so they were skimming from Hughes.

It was a combination in the end of the federal government cracking down, state government expanding its regulations, public opinion through media reporting on what was going on.

Anyone who has seen the movie Casino, which is not great history, it captures the aura and some of the personalities, but the idea that it was that Joe Pesci's character couldn't keep his hands off of Sharon Stone's character that brought down the mob is ridiculous. That said, a lot of that movie is based on newspaper accounts and TV reports about the evil the mob did.

So all of that kind of comes together and then with expansion of gambling around the country. Steve Wynn had gone from Las Vegas, where he still had the Golden Nugget downtown, to Atlantic City.

And he made a comment in the 80s that is well worth noting. He said, las Vegas doesn't need another casino, but it sure needs another attraction. And when he built the Mirage, that's what he did.

And granting that the hotel casinos had a variety of activities and offers, if you will, you could shop, you could eat, go to shows, etc.

The Mirage and then its accompanying hotels, some built by Wynne, some by Kerkorian, some by Sheldon Adelson, other groups too, they, in a sense, put it on steroids. They took it up several notches, and corporations could get that kind of money. Wynne could not get Wall street support when he built the Mirage.

He had to use Michael Milken and junk bonds. And he was able to pay off the junk bonds before the balloon went up in terms of the cost. So that was the sign.

Just as the Flamingo success was assigned to the mob win, Success was a sign for corporations.

Liam Heffernan: 00:30:20

In light of all of that, at this point in time, there were other destinations in America where people could go to gamble.

Places like Atlantic City, which are, you know, easier to get to, and arguably were, you know, part of a kind of bigger infrastructure within the state of New Jersey. So why is it that Vegas ended up being the destination for these huge financial kind of mega casinos.

Michael Green: 00:30:51

Capitalism. It's always a simple answer, but here's the thing. There are a few ways to look at it.

One is you go to these other places for your undergraduate degree, but you come here for graduate school. That's one way to look at it.

The other thing is that people like Wynn, the operators of Caesar's Palace, Adelson with the Venetian, Kerkorian with MGM Resorts, other people behind Circus Circus, Excalibur, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, what used to be Mandalay Resorts, saw that they had to do something different or something that other places either did not have or. Or did not have to the same degree.

An example of this is Caesar's palace in the early 90s, built something called the Forum Shops, the highest end shopping, for the most part that we had seen here. And one of the things they did was get Wolfgang Puck to put in a restaurant. And in a sense, this is the beginning of food tourism.

It used to be that you got the cheap buffet, you might have a nice dinner in the showroom. But now people are coming here for celebrity chefs and there are people who visit here just to eat really.

Another thing the Forum shops had was moving talking statuary, which at the time the early 90s was incredible. Today we look at it and say, meh. But I like to tell this story. I had two friends from graduate school who I knew from Columbia University.

One grew up in a small town, the other grew up in Philadelphia. The one from the small town, I mean, they're both very intelligent people. Obviously. One from the small town had traveled a bit.

Really a small town guy at heart. One from Philadelphia, widely traveled, very cosmopolitan minded and a classicist. Study the classics.

And they both visited and I took them to the Forum shops and showed them the moving statuary and they said the same three words, oh my God. My small town guy said oh my God. And my big city friend said, oh my God.

Well, Las Vegas didn't care how you said oh my God, as long as you said it and spent money here. But that's the idea to try different things. Cirque du Soleil is another example of this.

Cirque du Soleil is beautifully done and I've been to some of the shows and they're great.

But if you think back to the old days where it was Sinatra, a stand up comic, some dancers, you know, it's a lot more elaborate because you can do it technologically and the technology has been important. Las Vegas also moves with the culture so that, for example, sports betting haven't become so widespread.

Las Vegas has grown big enough as a community to support major league sports franchises and the hockey team is more locally oriented.

But the same idea exists where, say with the Las Vegas Raiders of the National Football League, a Pittsburgh Steelers fan might say, oh my Steelers are playing the Raiders. I'll come to Las Vegas, I'll watch the game there and I'll spend three days and I'll do other things the rest of the time, which makes sense.

Can't sit in the stadium for three days. So it's all part of the attraction of getting people to visit.

Liam Heffernan: 00:34:02

So I saw a stat a few years ago now, so it's probably outdated, but it was that a third of the, the wine sommeliers in the US work in Vegas, one third of all wine sommeliers.

And the reason I bring that up is, is because although people know Vegas for, for gambling and for weddings and you know, for some other stuff, actually it's now becoming a destination that people go to specifically for the leisure, for the food, for the entertainment for the sports. Do you think that's a natural, just evolution of Vegas as a city?

Michael Green: 00:34:43

It is a natural evolution. It is an understandable evolution in light of gambling being available elsewhere.

And the history professor in me who studies Las Vegas likes to say that things have changed a little less than people realize. If you go back to the.

Well, the 60s, frankly, but the 70s and 80s in particular, this was a major spot for boxing, which today is not the major sport it was, but this is the era of Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes and various other famous boxers. And so people would come here for that. The food, no, you'd come here to eat cheaply. The entertainment, you'd come here for that.

But I always love to cite this example. In the 90s, Las Vegas advertised itself as a family destination. It isn't that there wasn't always something for the family.

opened his first new hotel in: 1969

It isn't as if there wasn't something for families to do, but that is how Las Vegas promoted itself. Well, in the 90s, what was going on? The baby boom generation, I like to cite the Clintons.

Hillary are taking a trip in: 1992

And it's the era when people are talking about family values in politics. So Las Vegas tends to tie in with whatever is going on elsewhere. And leisure in the United States and around the world has changed.

Work habits have changed. And so Las Vegas adapts to those. And when someone asks me, what's the future? I hold up my Apple watch and say, whatever's coming next.

I grew up with Dick Tracy talking into his wristwatch telephone, thinking, that was really weird. And now we can do that.

Liam Heffernan: 00:36:50

That is the fascinating thing about Vegas, isn't it? Because it's just you never quite know what's around the corner.

But I wonder what sort of strain puts on the city's infrastructure, you know, because it's still essentially a heart, a desert town that's just grown massively. And there's issues like with the water supply from Hoover Dam and I'm sure with.

With other aspects of its infrastructure that because it is stuck in the middle of a desert, surely its growth is finite.

Michael Green: 00:37:20

Its growth is finite. But there's always the issue of how do you find more?

And it's very interesting that we're in the midst of negotiating the sequel to the original Colorado River Compact. And let's be blunt about the politics.

The United States just elected a president and a congressional majority that do not view climate change the way some other people view climate change. So how much does that affect what's happening here?

And there's been some joking, which is deserved, about Donald Trump referring to a spigot in Northern California. Well, at one point, there was an attempt to build a pipeline up the east side of Nevada.

So the Southern Nevada Water Authority actually owns ranches in rural Nevada where they can get some water. And that's always the thing. Water may be finite and it also may be a commodity. The limits, I think, tend to be forgotten in the quest for gain.

If you look at the greater Las Vegas community, there is always push and pull going on. I guess I'd say over the fact that Nevadans, or particularly Southern Nevadans, really don't want to pay for things.

Not that most people do, but tax the tourists, let them pay for it. Well, there was a point when the school district here was opening a new school every month to meet the demand. And does that continue to this day? No.

But I'll frame it this way. I have said this in talks to various groups here.

If I were running for the Clark County Commission and the Clark County Commission, Las Vegas and Clark county. So is the Strip. The Strip is not in the city. The county commission governs the Strip, or in the opinion of some, vice versa.

If I were running and I said I want us to have enough infrastructure, schools, sewers, parks, culture, you name it, to keep up with our growth, we need to float a quadrillion dollar bond issue right now, because in 25 years our population could double. I would be laughed out of town. But I think I'd also be right. If we're going to grow that much, we need to do a lot just to keep up with where we are.

And to quote a congresswoman here, we tend to be at the top of the bad lists and the bottom of the good lists. So it's a real problem.

Liam Heffernan: 00:39:59

Do you think that all of those sort of historic problems with Vegas and even the kind of the reputational challenges that Vegas has had over the years, do you think now that's being left in the past as Vegas becomes less of an entertainment tourist trap and more of a full city with an entertainment district.

Michael Green: 00:40:21

That's a tough one.

And the tough part is that a lot of the people who move here are attracted by how we function, whether it's limited government or limited interference in your life. So it can be very hard to get the support we need or I feel we need for things we need to change.

And I do like to think of the Strip as just a central business district of a significantly sized city or urban area that happens to be more active at night than you find Wall street to be, for example.

But there is a significant difference, and it involves a lifestyle and a culture and a culture that goes beyond Las Vegas to a state that long has had leaders and a significant number of its residents who preach that we don't need all of these infrastructural things.

Liam Heffernan: 00:41:19

It's fascinating, and I think it's almost impossible to predict kind of where Vegas goes from here.

I think kind of 10 years ago, if anyone had said to me that there would be several major sports franchises in the city, I would have said that's silly.

Michael Green: 00:41:35

But I would too.

Liam Heffernan: 00:41:36

Yeah, that's. But that's. That's the reality now. So I think Vegas, if anything, is always full of surprises.

And I feel like we've only really been able to scratch the surface on sort of the brief historiography of the city. And there's probably a lot more that we need to. To dive into on future episodes.

But for the sake of your time, Michael, as well as our listeners, I'm going to put a pin in the conversation for now. But I can't thank you enough for joining me and anything that we've mentioned in the episode.

If you're listening to this and you want to know more, we'll put links to it in the show notes, so go and check those out. But, Michael, if anyone wants to connect with you directly, where can they do that?

Michael Green: 00:42:19

Probably the easiest way to do it is through unlv and my email address is pretty simple. So am I, I guess. Michael greenenlv. Edu. But if you look up UNLV Michael Green, you'll find my semi smiling face.

Liam Heffernan: 00:42:36

That's awesome. And yeah, you can find me on blue sky and LinkedIn and just search for my name and I'll pop up in several places.

If you enjoy listening to this podcast, do also make sure you take a few seconds to leave us a rating and a review because it does bump us up those algorithms and helps more people find us, which is really awesome.

And additionally, we're going to record a quick bonus episode, which, if you support the show from as little as a couple of dollars a month, you'll get access to exactly the same time that this episode drops as well. Thank you so much for listening to this, and goodbye, Sam.