Las Vegas was Nevada’s fourth-largest city in 1930 with 5,000—count ‘em 5,000—souls. It had a Red Light District (“Block 16”) where gambling, booze and prostitution flourished out in the open to serve the miners and cowboys. The following year, as work was about to begin on the Hoover Dam, the State Legislature legalized gambling. They knew that the project would bring almost 10,000 workers to a site about 20 miles from Vegas. They were going to gamble anyway, so why not legalize it—and tax the proceeds. Overnight, Vegas became a boom town, with the Tax Commission receiving more than 250 applications for gaming licenses in the first month.

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel made his first trip to LA in 1933 and moved there two years later. He had visited Vegas many times, pushing the Mob’s racing wire on the sawdust joints in town. But, after narrowly beating a murder rap in 1942 and a bookmaking rap two years later, Siegel decided that owning a casino in Vegas would “legitimize” him:

There were seven hotel/casinos in Vegas in ’44, some air-conditioned, all built in the Western “Corral” style. Siegel made a move on the El Rancho Vegas but was rebuffed by the owner (who lived to tell about it). He bought the El Cortez and invited his New York Mob pals to invest with him. They sold the hotel a year later, nearly doubling their money.

Siegel next set his sights on a partially completed hotel on the edge of today’s “Strip.” It was already named the Flamingo by its owner, Billy Wilkerson, a LA restauranteur and publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, whose gambling debts left him unable to complete it. Siegel and his Mob pals bought him out. Siegel knew nothing about hotels or construction, but he threw himself into the project. He bribed Sen. Pat McCarran to get scarce building materials during wartime. His contractors ripped him off unmercifully (and lived to tell about it). He rashly made expensive changes to the Flamingo’s design and infrastructure, running up the cost from an initial estimate of $1 million, to about $6 million.

He also insisted on a grand opening date of 12/26/46, even though the sleeping rooms weren’t finished. His Hollywood star pals mostly stayed in LA. The high rollers came early, cleaned him out, and returned to the hotels in town, probably dropping Bugsy’s money at the tables there before turning in. Siegel was forced to close the Flamingo to finish the rooms. He reopened in the Spring of ’47 and reported a profit in May. But, by that time, he’d pissed off too many investors by selling thousands of points in the Flamingo, and through unpaid construction debts.

On June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot to death at the home of his mistress, Virginia Hill (who was in Europe at the time). No one was ever arrested for the murder, much less tried. But, before the body was cold, two big-time, Mob-connected gambling operators, Gus Greenbaum and Little Moe Sedway, moved into the Flamingo and claimed it. The hotel started making money hand over fist.

The Flamingo attracted the attention of Morris Barney (Moe) Dalitz. He had headed Cleveland’s Mayfield Road gang, who were the biggest rum-runners in the Midwest, bringing Canadian booze across Lake Erie in a fleet of boats so large it was called “the Jewish Navy.” After Prohibition, he ran gambling joints in Ohio and Kentucky. He also had legitimate interests in laundries. He was drafted and rose from Private to Captain in World War II, building and operating laundries for GI’s (you can see his commendation from the War Department in the Mob Museum in downtown Vegas).

He moved to Vegas in 1947, intent on becoming a major business and civic figure. He made a huge contribution to the city’s oldest synagogue and built a religious school that bears his name. Siegel simply bribed Pat McCarran, but Dalitz financed and managed his re-election campaign. He built the Desert Inn, the Stardust and the Sundance hotels, and operated a multi-state real estate company. He also built the Las Vegas Convention Center, which eventually brought millions of visitors from around the world to Vegas. He later said that "Las Vegas used to be just a gambling town. Now we are a resort destination. The Convention Center complements our purpose," He also built the Sunrise Hospital. His name was never in the Gaming Commission’s “Black Book”; he received the Golden Torch Award from the Anti-Defamation League in 1981.

Moe Dalitz, not Bugsy Siegel, “invented” Las Vegas by turning it from a provincial cow town to a global destination. Siegel did make one enduring contribution: the Flamingo was the first Vegas casino/hotel built in the modern “Tropical Resort” style instead of the Western “Corral” tradition. The Flamingo’s design approach set the stage for all later hotels, ending Vegas’ provincial look.