In Depth

There has rarely been a time in Vegas's post-Bugsy history when the city wasn't booming, but lately it's redefining "booming." A new megaresort seems to go up every other week, and each brings something new to the party, sometimes things hitherto never invited: great works of art, five-star world-renowned chefs, rock clubs and arenas that attract significant and still-current acts -- you get the idea. In other words, everything old is new again, and Vegas glamour is back.

The Mob in Las Vegas -- The role of the mafia in the creation of Las Vegas is little more than a footnote these days but it isn't too bold of a statement to suggest that without organized crime, the city would not have developed in the ways that it did and its past would have certainly been less colorful.

Meyer Lansky was a big name in the New York crime syndicate in the 1930s, and it was largely his decision to send Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel west to expand their empire. Although the Strip had already begun to form with the opening of El Rancho in 1941 and The Frontier in 1942, it was Bugsy's sparkling Flamingo of 1946 that began a mafia-influenced building boom and era of control that would last for decades. Famous marquees, such as the Desert Inn, the Riviera, and the Stardust, were all built, either in part or in whole, from funding sources that were less than reputable.

During the '60s, negative attention focused on mob influence in Las Vegas. Of the 11 major casino hotels that had opened in the previous decade, 10 were believed to have been financed with mob money. Then, like a knight in shining armor, Howard Hughes rode into town and embarked on a $300 million hotel- and property-buying spree, which included the Desert Inn itself (in 1967). Hughes was as "Bugsy" as Benjamin Siegel any day, but his pristine reputation helped bring respectability to the desert city and lessen its gangland stigma.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the government got involved, embarking on a series of criminal prosecutions across the country to try to break the back of the mafia. Although not completely successful, they did manage to wrest major control of Las Vegas away from organized crime through their efforts, aided by new legislation that allowed corporations to own casinos. By the time Steve Wynn built The Mirage in 1989, the mafia's role was reduced to the point where the most they could control were the city's innumerous strip clubs.

These days strict regulation and billions of dollars of corporate money keep things on the up and up, but the mob's influence can still be felt even at the highest levels of Las Vegas government. The popular and colorful Mayor Oscar Goodman, first elected in 1999, was a lawyer for the mafia in the 1960s and 1970s, defending famed gangsters such as Meyer Lanksy and Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro. Goodman cheerfully refers to his mafia-related past often, joking about his desire to settle conflicts in the desert at night with a baseball bat like "in the good old days." Goodman is also championing a Mob Museum in Las Vegas, which would be built in a former courthouse in the Downtown area that was the site of a number of mafia prosecutions.