Question of the Day - 24 December 2023

The Thunderbird Hotel and Casino opened in 1948 at a total cost of $3 million (nearly $40 million today's dollars).

Named for a mythological Navajo creature, it was built by Marion Hicks, a local contractor who also built the El Cortez downtown earlier that decade, and Clifford Jones, who was, at the time, Nevada's 35-year-old lieutenant governor. It was the fourth casino to open on the incipient Las Vegas Strip, after the El Rancho Vegas (1940), the Last Frontier (1941), and the Flamingo (1946). It was located a long block south of what was then known as San Francisco (now Sahara) Avenue.

By some accounts, the Thunderbird was the original locals joint, catering to Las Vegans with quality inexpensive food and an informality unknown at the other three resorts, where a tacit dress code was in force. It also had a bowling alley, the only one the Strip has ever had (yes, South Point has a bowling center, but it's not considered the Strip). And its Joe's Oyster Bar was renowned far and wide as the first, and perhaps best, oyster bar ever to serve a Las Vegas casino. In addition, since Lt. Governor Jones had the juice, the Thunderbird also turned into a hangout for many prominent state politicians and, therefore, celebrities and hangers-on.

The Thunderbird's heyday lasted till the mid-1950s, when there were 10 major resorts on the Strip. Also, in 1955, the Nevada Tax Commission (the forerunner of the state Gaming Control Board and Gaming Commission) exercised its authority on the Thunderbird, revoking its gambling license after a sting operation conducted by local newspapermen uncovered a loan to the hotel by Jake Lansky, Meyer Lansky's brother (which you can read about in the great expose book by Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris, The Green Felt Jungle, published in 1963). The courts later restored the Thunderbird's license, but its aura took a big hit and continued to fade.

The casino stumbled along for the next nine years until it was sold to Del Webb, a partner in the Sahara, which had opened a block north of the Thunderbird in 1952. Webb bought it in 1964 for $10 million and ran it till 1972, when he sold it to Caesars World for $13 million.

Par for the course, soon after buying it, the Caesars bosses realized they didn't want the old white elephant, so they essentially had Parry Thomas, the banker who held the $9 million mortgage on the property, repossess it. It took a few years, but Thomas finally sold it to Major Riddle, a partner in the Dunes; Riddle changed its name to the Silverbird. The Silverbird's poker room was known for being the meanest shark tank in town.

A few years later in 1981, Riddle unloaded it to Ed Torres, a longtime casino manager who also, at the time, owned the Aladdin in a partnership with Wayne Newton and had had an interest in the downtown Fremont for many years.

Torres renamed it the El Rancho, after the Strip's original hotel-casino, the El Rancho Vegas, which was located directly across the Strip until it burned to the ground in 1960 and was never rebuilt. Torres managed, though just barely, to keep the El Rancho alive; it limped along for another 10 years, with Torres keeping it on the market and dropping the price as low as $25 million, but found no takers.

The Thunderbird/Silverbird/El Rancho died in 1992 at the young age of 44.

It then stood for many years, dark and shuttered, a brooding hulk, somewhat like the fate of the skyscraper that replaced it. Even vacant, the property was ill-fated.

A number of developers and dreamers announced plans for the derelict building, most notable of which was Countryland USA; this group even went so far as to put a fence around the property and erect a big sign with the new name. Nothing happened. Then a pipe dream called Starship Orion was announced. Nothing happened. Then a London-themed resort was announced. Nothing happened.

Finally, Turnberry Associates picked up the 21-acre property for roughly $45 million in 1999, a bargain $2.14 million an acre. Nothing more than an eyesore in the view from Turnberry's upscale high-rise condos behind it, the El Rancho was imploded on September 30, 2000.

In May 2005, Turnberry announced that it would develop a $1.5 billion 4,000-room Fontainebleau Las Vegas, modeled on Miami Beach's famous Fontainebleau Hotel. Construction was supposed to have begun by the end of 2005. Nothing happened.

The rest of the story has been told recently in all our coverage of Fontainebleau Las Vegas, which opened a couple of weeks ago.