Before it was Harrah's, the resort-casino in that location at center Strip across from Caesars was called the Holiday Hotel. A Holiday Inn property, it opened in 1972 and had 1,000 rooms. In late 1989, the Holiday completed a 35-story 734-room tower, which made it the largest Holiday Inn in the world.
A year later in 1990, a major facelift transformed the Holiday into a 450-foot-long Mississippi riverboat. Its 80-foot-diameter paddlewheel, 85-foot-tall smokestacks, and gangways, crow's nest, and pilot room earned the hotel the nickname "Ship on the Strip" -- one of several "riverboat" casinos floating in a sea of Nevada sand.
(At the time, the Showboat was drydocked out on Boulder Highway; Nevada Landing in Jean had a riverboat theme; and there was a Riverboat casino in Reno. The Colorado Belle in Laughlin was unusual, in that it was the only riverboat casino in Nevada actually on a river; it's also the only one of the five that remains.)
In addition, the lime-jello lighting effects on the towers seemed to place the Holiday at centerstage in this Emerald City.
Shortly thereafter in 1992, the name of the hotel-casino was changed to Harrah's, which owned Holiday Inn.
In 1997, Harrah's completed another expansion and renovation to the tune of $150 million, adding a 35-story 700-room tower, new restaurants and retail shops, and an expanded casino. Also, the riverboat hoopla was replaced with a more "elegant" (as it was called at the time; most people have thought of it ever since as generic) façade.
