Question of the Day - 28 October 2021

This question comes off the QoD from October 2, asking if one out of the thousands of questions we've answered over the years stands out as the best. The one that came to my mind was as follows: "How old would Las Vegas be now in human years? What was Vegas like at two years old, as an adolescent, young adult, middle-aged?" 

We answered it on June 29, 2006, so it was written more than 15 years ago and we haven't updated it. Anyone who'd like to help bring it to the present day is more than welcome to do so in the comments. 

If the story of Las Vegas is told in human terms, then the city survived an insecure but industrious childhood and a precarious young adulthood to emerge into middle age, not quite unscathed, but solidly in control of its destiny. Today, Las Vegas is probably in its early to mid-fifties — a prosperous Boomer, with a high-paying job at a casino, a closet full of business and leisure wear (getting a little tight around the waistline), and a busy social calendar.

Las Vegas was born to good stock and though somewhat backwater and roughneck, it grew up on the right track. The town, forged by dust, heat, and grease to service the Salt Lake-Los Angeles railroad, wasn't a comely youngster, but it always had a little glint in its eye, highlighting the notion of bigger and better things to come.

In mid-childhood, Las Vegas was left fatherless when the railroad got fed up with family life and walked out, leaving the fledgling town to fend for itself. Luckily, only a few forsaken years later, a new paternal figure showed up, sort of a stepdad — Hoover Dam. And though the prosperous years of construction were brief, the dam's legacy has been monumental, having endowed its stepchild with all the energy and sustenance it would need to earn its keep.

With not only its survival but also its prosperity assured, a prodigal uncle breezed into town. Uncle Bugsy arrived from the coast, driving a big black Chrysler, wearing a silk jacket and alligator shoes, looking to set up a gambling hall. And boom! Las Vegas's hormones kicked in. This was 1945 and the town's 40-year childhood was ending. Las Vegas as an adolescent hit the ground running, with garish clothes, fast friends, heavy gambling, public drunkenness, non-stop lust, wide-open fun — a patent teenage disrespect for the world.

Adolescent boomtowns aren't known for longevity, especially in the desert. They either dry up, burn out, or reform. Las Vegas's case was no different. Buoyed by its boundless resources, the exuberant young town embraced the action with such reckless excess that even the inexorable intervention of civilization couldn't restrain it. After years of debauchery, Las Vegas was on the verge of a breakdown — when the only authority that could impose some order stepped in. The godfather.

The head of the Mafia's most powerful family clamped down on the town with tough love, installing a highly effective brand of management by intimidation and muscle and laundering enough black cash to take on as much action as the market would bear.

But then, right in the middle of its big-money years, a figurative big brother showed up to collect the debt it believed the town owed society for the errors of its wanton ways. In the 1960s, just when it looked as if Las Vegas's profligate youth would come to an end at the hands of the overzealous feds, an old friend came to call: a wealthy eccentric benefactor who for years had kept an eye on the place and was finally prepared to foster it.

Howard Hughes carried so much legitimate capital that he bought off the heat straight up (the godfather retired alive and at peace in Palm Springs). He nurtured Las Vegas for a few more of its formative years and when he moved on, he left in place a legion of corporate civilizers to bring the principles of prudence and the Harvard Business School to bear. Thus did Las Vegas enter adulthood — still irreverent, of course, but much wiser in the ways of the world and, conclusively, at long last, legit.

Starting in the early 1970s, though swathed, coifed, and plumed in full neon regalia, Las Vegas was turning corporate to its core. It was a peculiar and disorderly metamorphosis (that many still lament), but eventually the transition was total, in which CEOs and CPAs ABC’d the bottom line. In the process, Las Vegas advanced to middle age and by the late ‘80s the city was the equivalent of 45 or so in people years, complete with wrinkles and stress ailments, starched collars and three-piece suits. Even so, the mellowing with age paid the usual dividends and the city was settled, secure, successful, and ready to designate an heir.

In the best tradition of inheritors, Steve Wynn invigorated Las Vegas with fresh meaning and purpose. He recognized that the company store could no longer survive selling gambling alone, but it had to present the "gaming" as entertainment. He cloaked his casinos in South Seas and Renaissance Italian splendor, with public pyrotechnics and water ballets and new-age circuses; other casinos followed suit, trying to one-up one another with themes, roller coasters, virtual arcades — even scale models of the world’s greatest cities.

Today, as Las Vegas eyes, with mild surprise, its approaching senior status, it’s concerned with power, prestige, glory— and presenting a unified singular face to the world. After years of consolidating and conglomerating, the many smaller casinos have been swallowed by the few big casinos. The large casinos grow larger, so that more people can come, stay, play, and enjoy the hospitality of Las Vegas, aging gracefully, though still young at heart.

It’s doubtful that Vegas will ever retire, preferring to sit back, pull strings, and watch the future spiral outward into an infinity of alternate possibilities.