Fremont Street’s gaming emporiums and speakeasies attracted dam workers and, upon the dam’s completion, were replaced by hordes of tourists who came to see the engineering marvel (it was called “the Eighth Wonder of the World”).
Although gambling still happened in the backrooms of saloons after it became illegal in 1909, the lifting of those prohibitions in 1931 is what set the stage for the first of the city’s many booms. That all changed in 1928 when Congress authorized the building of nearby Boulder Dam (later renamed Hoover Dam), bringing thousands of workers to the area.
For many years after its creation via a land auction in 1905, Las Vegas was a mere whistle-stop town.
