It wasn’t the first hotel to be built in Las Vegas, as some argue, but Golden Gate is full of first-rate hotels. 파친코
In 1906, when John F. Miller opened a 10-room hotel on the corner of Main and Fremont streets, it was called Hotel Nevada at the time. However, when the telephone line was installed in Las Vegas, it was Miller’s hotel that got the first telephone number in town, “Ring 1.”
It opened as the first casino in Las Vegas. In 1959, it became a staple food in Las Vegas and the first to serve a 50-cent shrimp cocktail that in some ways became a symbol of Las Vegas.
It was the first time Derek Stevens and his brother Gregg acquired the first gaming property in Las Vegas in 2008. It will be the catalyst for change in downtown Las Vegas in 14 years.
As the hotel celebrated its anniversary turning 116 this week, Stevens recalled why Golden Gate was the perfect entry point for him into Las Vegas.
“I thought it was important to come out in Las Vegas, shut up, listen, learn, watch, learn about the hotel business, learn about the beverage business, learn about the slot business, the table game business. And I thought this was the right place for me to cut my teeth,” Stevens said Thursday, standing under the Fremont Street Experience Canopy between Golden Gate and Stephens’ latest development, Circa.
Stevens applied what he learned from running, expanding, and modernizing the historic hotel to the renovation of Fitzgerald’s and rebranding it to Las Vegas in 2012. Stevens said those experiences greatly impacted the ultimate design of Circa, which opened in 2020 and remains the latest resort downtown.
“Without the golden gate, Cirka wouldn’t be here now,” Stevens said.
116 years of history
When Miller opened the hotel door across the street from a train station in 1906, it was not the only accommodation nearby. According to Michael Green, a UNLV history professor, there was a tent hotel, and the wooden Overland Hotel managed to climb right in front of Miller’s Hotel Nevada.
“Golden Gate is the oldest hotel here. It was not the first hotel in Las Vegas. Sometimes people say that by mistake, but there were other hotels first,” said Green. But there was something remarkable about Miller’s hotel.
“It was made of concrete, which also suggests a degree of permanence that no one else had,” Green said. “A concrete hotel that was here in 1906 when the population was about 320. This is a leap of faith.”
As the building is the oldest hotel in Las Vegas, its permanence has been proven to be true. Overland will eventually become the Las Vegas Club later before closing in August 2015.
The Golden Gate has witnessed all of this throughout its lifetime. Gambling became illegal in 1910, and hotels were forced to remove card tables and roulette wheels for 20 years. It endured the ban from 1920 to 1933, and is now home to the bar ban, which was completed in 1933 with a framed newspaper announcing the end of the ban on the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages.
In 1931, the Nevada Hotel became Sal Sagev, as it was previously named. In 1955, when a group of businessmen from the Bay Area took over the operation of the hotel, Green said, it completely replaced the hotel and gave the casino its name, Golden Gate Bridge.
The Bay Area entrepreneurs also gave Las Vegas a shrimp cocktail modeled on a dish found at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. The dish, Green said, “It became bigger than the food itself.”
“It seemed to show what old Las Vegas had to represent. It was good, cheap, good entertainment,” Green said.
an ode to the past
The Stephens brothers entered the building in 2008, and in 2012, they renovated the main building for the first time in half a century by adding 16 suites to the 35,000-square-foot luxury tower. They completed their second expansion in 2017, adding a casino entrance to the Fremont Street Experience.
Stevens prides himself on owning the oldest and newest casinos in town at Golden Gate and Circa. While he demolished other old buildings for Circa, including the Las Vegas Club, Golden Gate carries a special emotional value to him.
After extensive upgrades and modernization, the hotel rooms and casino floors now have 129 rooms. But for those who wish to set foot on a time machine, Golden Gate offers “Original 10” rooms that date back to the hotel’s opening in 1906.
“Obviously, I’m not against anything new,” Stephens said. “But I’ve always looked at Golden Gate differently. And I thought this came with the obligation of a probably non-legal community to preserve and invest in the property.”