Nope. That accolade, along with many other firsts, belongs to Fremont Street, the original hub of Las Vegas back when "the Strip" was just plain old Highway 91, a two-lane dirt track frequented more by tumbleweed than vehicular traffic.
The first of the big premieres was in 1907, when Las Vegas' first telephone was installed at the Hotel Nevada, now the Golden Gate. Then, in 1925, Fremont became the first street in Las Vegas to be paved -- at first just between Main and 5th.
In 1931, the year that saw both the legalization of gambling and the start of construction on Hoover Dam, Fremont Street really started to rock, as the city's population increased fivefold virtually overnight, from around 5,000 to 25,000. Electricity from the new dam powered the lights that gave the street its nickname of Glitter Gulch -- and its first traffic light, which was installed that same year. The following year saw the arrival of Las Vegas' first elevator, at the new 100-room Apache Hotel and Casino (now the oldest part of the Horseshoe). Some years later the Horseshoe was the first casino to install carpet.
The first traffic light on the Strip arrived some thirty years after Fremont Street's. Here's the story, courtesy of an excerpt from Dick Odessky's Fly on the Wall:
"I remember the long hard fight that Jack Cortez, publisher of Las Vegas' first weekly entertainment magazine, Fabulous Las Vegas, waged to get the first traffic light installed on the Strip. It was around 1960 and Cortez used his magazine, which was placed in every hotel room in town, to climb onto this soap box and demand a traffic signal at the intersection of the Strip and what was then known as Fulcher Road. At the same time, the original Convention Center was under construction at the intersection of Fulcher and Paradise roads, and Cortez thought it was critical to have some traffic safety at that spot as well. He made innumerable appearances before the County Commission to plead his case.
"The Commissioners finally threw Jack a bone and installed a stop sign at the barren intersection, recently paved, that fronted the Convention Center. Heartened by that success, Cortez redoubled his efforts for traffic control at his pet intersection, which, he rightfully realized, was the virtual center of the Strip with an equal number of major businesses north and south of the corner. He made regular appearances before the County Commissioners, the Planning Board, and any other board that would listen to him. He presented all sorts of elaborate graphs and charts, plus statistics and other numbers (which were never attributed to anyone) enumerating pedestrian and vehicular accident reports and incident reports.
"On the opposing side were all the hotel owners and operators along the Strip who didn't want their thoroughfare saddled with electric traffic control. Some owners even suggested they'd fade the expense of hiring a private traffic cop to be stationed at this one intersection whenever needed ... But the whole thing fell apart when the backers presented some drawings to the commissioners showing a stand from which the cop would direct traffic. The big box was covered with casino advertising, which would be sold to pay the traffic director's salary ...
"At one County Commission meeting, a little old lady ... supposedly from Arizona, asked if she might say a few words that she felt were important for the commissioners to hear. The woman launched into a tirade about how close she'd come to being hit by a car that was speeding down the Strip at 70 miles per hour as she and her poor old husband tried to cross in front of the Stardust hotel. She harangued the commissioners about a traffic light at that intersection for a full 15 minutes, with Jack Cortez providing the Greek chorus: 'The poor lady!' 'Her poor husband!' 'You tell 'em!' And 'Amen' to that!'"
It took Cortez several more years to win his case, but when the Commissioners finally relented, he made sure to turn his big day into a major celebration, with a big parade to celebrate the Strip's first traffic light. And once the signal was turned on and casino owners saw how all the traffic was stopping right outside the Stardust, petitions started flooding in from ever everyone else wanting a red stop light outside their property too."
Fly on the Wall Recollections of Las Vegas' Good Old, Bad Old Days by Dick Odessky
