weekend, history tv is featuring las vegas, nevada. it is him to the stratosphere, the tallest freestanding observation tower in the united states at 1149 feet. visited staff recently -- c-span's staff recently visited the city. learn more here on american history tv. mr. schwartz: there are a lot of thoughts about why gaveling is so polarizing. the antithesis of the managerial work ethic and working hard in getting ahead. people say that people with money a gambling did not earn it. i think that is why it is polarizing. and of course you can lose a lot of money doing it so it can be very dangerous financially. gambling in las vegas goes back to the very beginning of las vegas.

it was established by what was in -- what was the union pacific railroad then it was the los angeles, salt lake and san pedro railroad. they bought a ranch from a woman named helen stewart and decided they were going to lay it out on here. this is the original map from that auction. i want to buy land on lot 22, i want this piece of land, and that is what this map is. generated by a railroad. the original site plan had las vegas divided into 40 blocks. they needed a place with a cult vice, which was a classic wild west vice, drinking, gambling and prostitution. here's the thing. las vegas was going to be a respectable town. the railroad, a respectable railroad. so you couldn't have it on fremont street. so they called one of the blocks block 16, this is the red light district. and it was elizabeth away from the translation, just one block

off fremont. if you walked down a block, turned left and walked down another block from the train station, that's right where it is. so if a man comes to las vegas with his family they could stay on fremont street and have a wholesome time and if he comes by himself in wants to see a little bit of the world, he can make a left and walked down there to block 16. a couple of interesting things happen in the state of nevada. in 1909 the state decided they were done with gambling. they want to become a real modern progressive state so they outlawed gambling. great for that. then a couple years later they realized people were still gambling the so then, we'll allow social card games, we will allow penny ante. that is legal. then in 1931 they took the plunge, during the great depression, and they were hard hit, took the plunge and said let's realize -- legalize

commercial gambling. the governor signed that legislation in late march. the first week of april, the las vegas city commission met and they granted the first four licenses to casinos. and here is the minute book reflecting that vote. we see they granted a license to the boulder club, to the las vegas club, to the exchange club, and to the northern club. these were the first four gambling halls -- they weren't casinos. it was just a bar with a couple tables and it that they granted a license to. these were really small scale and for a long time in las vegas, there was this need by folks in the chamber of commerce and other people to say you know what, we need a first-class hotel. the this is when hoover dam was being built and they said if we just could have a first-class

hotel in downtown las vegas, we could become a huge tourism -- tourist mecca. finally in the late 1930's, a guy named thomas hull said he's going to build a hotel. it was on the road that linked los angeles to las vegas. there is a really interesting story about this. so supposedly, it's apocryphal, he was driving to las vegas and his car broke down and he sat on the side of the road. he sent his friend to go into town and get help, which is why i think it's apocryphal, because it is not much of a friend, at least he wouldn't be after walking three miles and the desert. he counts the cars going past and says you know what? this is where i should build my hotel, not downtown where i am competing with everybody. train people, do i really need them? i want to get the automobile people.

after world war ii, this was a boom in the car culture auto via -- autopia, the interstate highway system. so he built the rancho vegas out on highway 91. if you look at this, this gives you an idea. you can see that sex was always part of the package even then in a very sedate way. if you look at this, this does not look like an urban gambling hall. this is somewhere out in the wild west. so it opened with 63 rooms. this was considered big at the time. this was the first time in the united states they built an isolated gambling destination. they'd done it down in mexico at agua caliente, but the mexico government had banned gambling there. actually it was the same architect. what made the el rancho vegas

different was you could do everything there. this was into and with casino economics. back when gambling was legal in those cities, they wanted people to lose their money and leave quickly. bust-out games, they would lose and go. here, you had a shot at legitimacy. the games are honest. that is that house edge, though. that means over time the customer will lose. but in the short time they can get lucky in win a lot of money. you want things around to keep them from leaving the casino. you went them to lose their money back to you. so you get stuff like this, which to me is really instructive. this man is throwing caution to the wind and he's eating a piece of pie. i don't know whether he is salivating or the pie is crying because it's getting eaten to death. i don't know. el rancho vegas had the first casino buffett. the idea was you go in there, it

was one dollar at first, chuck wagon buffett. you stuff yourself with all the food in your soap way down that you keep gambling -- you are so weighed down that you keep gambling, you are stuck in the casino, that was the idea and this worked. it was very successful and several other casinos opened on the las vegas strip after that. so this idea that you wanted a lot of attractions around to keep people in the casino was good business. we've all heard about the rat pack. but the interesting thing is a lot of the entertainers really started to make their name and a big-time way in las vegas. when you look at sammy davis jr., when he started in las vegas, was the will matson trio, his dad and uncle and at some point sammy became bigger. as this memo from the william

morris agency shows, the billing that mr. davis needed was his name had to be in the same size type as bill mastin trio and at some point became the biggest trio because now sammy davis junior is bigger than the treo. -- trio. one of the great things about las vegas this time was that you could meet celebrities. you could hob-knob with celebrities. so, for example, they have the executive vice president of national tire dealers and re-treaders association had a meeting at the sands and sammy davis jr. comes to their party and everybody gets to meet sammy davis jr. so imagine if you are a tire dealer and now you can say i met sammy davis jr., i shook his hand. what made las vegas

so special in the 1950's. it was a much smaller scale. you can be in great them. after while las vegas starter get bigger in the scale that changed and you no longer had that personal connection with the celebrities there. there was a lot of sl searching about what to do. some people thought the time was getting boring. one was jay sarnow, who had a very good relationship with jimmy hoffa and the teamsters. he was able to get money from him. he decided, he came to vegas in 1963 and hated it, he thought it was the most boring place. even though he was a compulsive gambler and like to do a lot of other things that people like to do in vegas. so he decided they needed something special. that something was a theme, a fantasy, excitement. so he built a place called caesar's palace. if you were lucky enough to be invited to the opening, you had a big beefy centaur ian -- cen turian-looking guy come to your house and hand you this scroll.

they would invite you for an or gy ofexcitement -- an or excitement featuring andy williams and dancing maidens. this was really great. the idea, what made caesar's palace different, it's it -- as it says in the last paragraph, , the hordesaesar's of gladiators and maidens are here to serve your every wish and command. this is what made las vegas a different kind of destination , and jay had the idea of what happens in vegas stays in vegas long before anybody else did. that is, vegas is special. up don't just go there and have a night out. you go there and the women in the restaurant are wine goddesses, they massage your temples, peel the grades and put them in your mouth. you are the center of everything.

it was incredibly successful, became the most successful casino on the strip for years until the mirage opened. another change that happened in the 1960's is the industry continued to scale up, so a place like the sands when it opened at 200, 300 rooms when it opened, pretty small. they found out you could make a lot of money running a casino, so outside businesses started to get interested. one of the people who got kirk kerkorian who made a lot of money in the aviation industry. he decided you know what? the real money is not only land, it is in running the businesses. so he built the international hotel. this is the original reservation booklet. he build it off the strip. here is what the international was planned to look like.

one thing you will notice is that it's a big building in the middle of a parking lot and you have this flat structure which has the casino and theater in it and this big tower, 30 stories high and y-shaped. this was the first y-shaped casino in vegas. you will see in the 1990's, a lot of the casinos that were built followed this model. the international, it was the first real modern casino in this way and set the pattern for what was going to come. this opened in 1969. july 1969. so, the next really big event on the las vegas strip was the opening of the mirage in 1989. built by steve wynn, who built a small downtown gambling club called the golden nugget.

he made a big splash in atlantic city we are built the golden nugget atlantic city. he was able to get investors, using junk bonds. $650 milliono get to build the mirage. the biggest project before had been $200 million. really different, really ground-breaking. one of the things that set the mirage apart was it was not a casino with a hotel attached, it was a resort that had a casino in it. of course you had people like siegfried and roy. they had been magicians in various shows now they get the center of their own show, which was incredibly expensive at the time but people paid it because it was a good show. you see here, this is a ad for the mirage. you have the little dolphin habitat. you couldn't picture the casinos from back in the day -- you know, the sands hotel had frank, dean, and sammy.

they didn't have a dolphin habitat. this gives you an idea of how it is changing and evolving. they would have laughed this out of the room in 1953. what? there's nobody gambling. the this is how las vegas changed in the 1990's. it became about more than just gambling. that was a really good move because gambling was expanding across the united states so they couldn't compete on just gambling. the difference between las vegas and reno is las vegas really diversified beyond gambling. today, only about 35% of the income for casinos comes from gambling. most comes from the rooms, entertainment, and food. you are not would you find a lot of stuff that explicitly talks about the mob in the collection because these people do not like -- like to leave records. but if you look at the people who came to town and build it

up, loads of them came out of illegal gambling and most were connected to organized crime. so you definitely had that influence here and if you know how to look for it, certain names of people, you can see which people were more connected than others. i think it's really important to document the history of the casino industry in las vegas and everywhere because it is such a controversial industry, such a history with organized crime that there is a lot of misinformation out there and it is really great to be able to go into it and see firsthand, this is what really happened. the people who built the industry, this is what they were trying to do. that's why i think it's so valuable. it can tell you what it was really like. our staff recently traveled to las vegas, nevada to learn about its rich history. learn more about las vegas and

other stops on the tour on our website. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3 tv. announcer: each week until the 2016 election, wrote to the white house rewind brings you archival coverage of presidential races. next, dwight eisenhower kicks off his 1952 presidential campaign with a speech in his boy found -- in his boyhood hometown abilene, kansas. he was still in the military, serving in europe as nato's supreme commander. taft was considered the republican front-runner. supporters in a move to, quote, "draft eisenhower," put his name on the ballot in several primaries. by the end of the primary season the race between eisenhower and taft was considered dead even.