Question of the Day - 12 April 2019

The El Cortez occupies the oldest original casino building in Las Vegas (and thus the nation). The El Cortez opened at the corner of Fremont and 6th streets in 1942, before Fremont was even paved that far. The original sign still sits atop the wing of the building on that corner.

The Golden Gate occupies the first hotel building to be erected in the incipient town of Las Vegas in 1905. It was first known as the Hotel Nevada, then the Sal Sagev (Las Vegas spelled backwards), and finally the Golden Gate, starting in 1955.

But exactly 100 years before the Sal Sagev became the Golden Gate, in June 1855, 30 Latter-Day Saints made the 35-day trek to Las Vegas Valley from Salt Lake City to establish the first permanent settlement in southern Nevada. They built a “fort,” surrounded by a 14-foot-tall and 150-foot-long wall on all four sides, to live in, thus becoming the first non-Native residents of Las Vegas Valley.

They didn't really need protection against the local Paiute; the fort was more to keep their livestock in than the indigenous population out.

The Mormons abandoned the settlement and their Las Vegas mission only three years later in 1858. The walls eventually came down. But one of the adobe buildings within the walls survived, becoming a small storage shed on the original Las Vegas Ranch in the late 19th century before being bought by the town-founding railroad in 1904.

The railroad leased the fort to various tenants in the early 20th century, including the Bureau of Reclamation, which used it as a concrete-testing lab for Hoover Dam. The railroad sold the fort to the Elks in the fort's centennial year, 1955. It was next bought by the city in 1971. A number of preservation efforts since then have kept the Old Fort from going the way of most Las Vegas history. It became a 2.8-acre state historic park in 1990.

Today, the Old Mormon Fort is the oldest original building in Las Vegas — at the exact spot where Las Vegas began and in the same building, too.

2005 was the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) of the Old Mormon Fort. In honor of its longevity, the state of Nevada spent $1.9 million building a 4,000-square-foot visitor center, capping a 15-year $4.5 million restoration-and-preservation project for the park.

The Fort is located at 500 E. Washington Ave. in the northwest corner of the Cashman Field parking lot, about a mile north of downtown on Las Vegas Blvd. N.