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According to Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Jane Ann Morrison, writing in the Boulder City Review, "Nevada’s first gaming license wasn’t given to anyone, the second and third licenses have expired, and the fourth went to the Railroad Pass Club," which turned 80 last August. However, A.D. Hopkins, in The First 100, a history of Nevada pioneers, writes that the premier license went, in 1931, to the Northern Club, a former speakeasy on Fremont Street, operated by Mayme Stocker, which the image reproduced below seems to substantiate.
Clark County then issued a gambling license to the Red Rooster, a nightclub that sat on Highway 91, where The Mirage now stands. It opened on April 1, 1931 with three slot machines and a blackjack table. The first upscale casino, the Meadows Club, was built near the junction of Charleston Boulevard and Fremont Street, east of downtown. The Meadows Club opened on May 2. (It burned down a few years later.) Three days later, the Pair-O-Dice Club – which stood opposite the current location of the Peppermill restaurant on the Strip – began offering craps, blackjack and roulette. In fact "the Strip" was a nickname coined by subsequent Pair-O-Dice owner Guy McAfee.
On July 25, 1931, the Las Vegas Review-Journal proclaimed, "Railroad Pass Club to Open this Evening." Or not. On the 31st, the paper revised that statement to, "Railroad Pass Club to Make Formal Bow Tomorrow" [August 1]. Getting the Pass up and running evidently proved difficult for, on August 17, in an advertisement, "Announcing the Formal Opening of the Railroad Pass Club," the casino’s debut was now posited for August 31.
According to Dennis McBride, curator of history and collections for the Nevada State Museum, "Railroad Pass was issued its county gaming license on July 7, 1931. Both Clark County and the City of Las Vegas had been issuing gaming licenses/permits for years back into the 1920s. After gaming was legalized statewide in 1931, Las Vegas had to come up with a new ordinance to comply with the new law and it granted several licenses under the aegis of the new state law in April 1931.
"It’s difficult to tell how many city licenses were granted in the first few months of the new law; nor could I find an accurate number of county licenses granted under the new law. All I can tell you is that Railroad Rass got licensed two or three weeks before it opened, and that there were a few county licenses issued before that for venues outside the Las Vegas city limits (the Pasture; Blue Heaven).
"I personally remember the Pass as far back as the early 1960s. Whether it has been continuously open, I can’t say, but I believe there were very short periods in its history when it was closed briefly between owners."
The Cal-Neva Lodge, which straddles the California/Nevada border near Lake Tahoe was "the oldest currently-licensed [sic] casino in the United States," according to Philip Weiss, author of Cal-Neva Revealed. However, its first five years of operation (1926-31) were strictly illegal and it did not receive a Nevada gaming license until 1937. It closed its doors in April 2010, but has since reopened.
As you can see, tracing the lineage of Nevada’s first gaming licenses is a difficult business, what with Las Vegas, Clark County and eventually the state itself getting into the act. Whether or not the Railroad Pass was the first- or fourth-licensed casino in Nevada or not, it has long outlived all its early competitors, which is no small achievement in itself.
Images appear courtesy of UNLV Special Collections.
