For that, it needed people with experience running gambling businesses.
Still, an influx of gamblers every two weeks wasn’t enough to make Las Vegas a gambling mecca. During World War II, the opening of a magnesium plant in nearby Henderson, Nevada also brought in a large population of workers looking for weekend recreation. “One of the sayings was that the town got very exciting for a couple of days a month,” says Michael Green, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. On pay day, these workers would travel the roughly 25 miles to Las Vegas to enjoy gambling on Fremont Street, which was the downtown hub of Vegas before the Strip. Nevada’s legalization of gambling in 1931 coincided with the beginning of construction on the Hoover Dam, which brought thousands of workers to Boulder City. View of Fremont Street in Las Vegas, Nevada, with a car racing down, c.
