7 Quirky Facts about Las Vegas

1. Its first hotel casino, the Hotel Nevada (now the Golden Gate Hotel), opened in 1906. The phone number was 1 and rooms cost $1 per day.

2. Vegas didn’t begin paving its streets until 1925.

3. It is illegal to ride a camel on any Vegas highway.

4. A former Los Angeles police captain named Guy McAfee nicknamed Las Vegas Boulevard “The Strip,” a reference to L.A.’s Sunset Strip.

5. Above-ground nuclear tests were conducted from 1951 to 1962 in the Nevada desert. The blasts were visible from the city, and viewing them became a popular activity.

6. In 1957, former showgirl Lee Merlin became the first “Miss Atomic Bomb,” and thus the term bombshell was born.

7. Las Vegas welcomed nearly six million convention attendees in 2023.