Chef Mario Batali University of Nevada Las Vegas associate history professor Michael Green replies that the name refers to the area to the northwest of downtown Las Vegas where I-515, I-93, US-95, and I-15 come together. The tangled – and confusing – confluence of highways lends the ‘bowl’ its name.
Green’s UNLV colleague, Dr. Eugene Moehring, provides insight into the traffic hub’s origins. "The Spaghetti Bowl began to take shape in the late 1960s when the old City Park, built by the New Deal in the 1930s, was cleared for I-15 and its original cloverleaf on/off ramps (not as many as today). That road opened through downtown in roughly 1970 -- give or take a year. (It opened up to Sahara Avenue going northbound in 1968 and opened past North Las Vegas by 1971)," writes the author of Resort City in the Sunbelt.
"Construction on the Oran Gragson Expressway (US 95/395) to provide access east and west in the budding metropolitan area to I-15 began almost immediately on the western leg," Moehring continues. "In the beginning that road ran at street grade to Decatur [Boulevard] (later, it was elevated--in a process resembling that on the northern beltway today)."
Moehring can’t pin down the origins of the Spaghetti Bowl moniker but says that use of it was in full swing when he moved to Las Vegas in 1976. "Channel 8 and the newspapers were the ones who most used and popularized the term." "I am not sure who named it," Green seconds, "but whoever did deserves royalties." Indeed. If you had a dollar for every time the Bowl is referenced in local traffic reports, you’d be richer than King Midas.
