Highway 99 by Stephen H. Provost

Author:Stephen H. Provost
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Linden Publishing
Published: 2017-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

The El Rancho Vegas, seen in this 1940 postcard, featured the chain’s trademark windmill, just like the one along U.S. 99 in Fresno. Burton Frasher/public domain.

The Fresno location opened in 1939, and it wasn’t long before Hull sought to reproduce his vision in another western city. As the story goes, he was traveling on Highway 91 when one of his tires went flat just outside Las Vegas. A companion headed into town to seek help, while Hull passed the time counting cars as they passed on the highway. By the time the tire was repaired, Hull was so impressed with the number of travelers whizzing past that he decided Vegas would be a perfect place to build the next El Rancho.

Hull bought 33 acres off the highway just south of town, at San Francisco (later renamed Sahara) Avenue. The price was a mere $5,000. Then he set about building his resort, teaming up with the same architect who had designed the El Ranchos in Fresno and Sacramento. Wayne McAllister had also designed the Agua Caliente resort in Tijuana, and he lent the same sort of flavor to the El Rancho chain. As with the California sites, the new Rancho Vegas featured the distinctive windmill tower as its centerpiece. Lit up in pink-and-white neon, it rose 50 feet above the main building. It had a Wagon Wheel Tavern, just like the one in Fresno, with the rooms laid out in the same semicircular pattern.

It was bigger, though, as everything in Vegas would be, from the hotels themselves to the massive neon signs out front. Originally consisting of 63 bungalows, the Rancho Vegas eventually grew to include 220 rooms. The hotel was different from others in the chain in one important respect: It had gambling. Modest by later standards, its casino included a couple of blackjack tables, a roulette wheel, a craps table, and 70 slot machines. It also kicked off an enduring Las Vegas tradition with its Chuck Wagon buffet, the first all-you-can-eat operation in the city and, according to some accounts, anywhere in the United States.

Hull didn’t own the Vegas property for long, selling it a year after it opened. In the “bigger is better” tradition of the city, other resorts soon surpassed it in terms of hype and glitz, including Siegel’s Flamingo, which opened five years later and is often credited (erroneously) with being the first resort on the Strip. The El Rancho continued to attract big names in entertainment, however. The likes of Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Lewis, and Sammy Davis Jr. all performed there, and comedian Joe E. Lewis was the regular act. Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman even got married at the El Rancho in 1958. And on the night of June 17, 1960, Betty Grable and her bandleader husband Harry James were performing there when a fire broke out and burned the El Rancho to the ground. It was never rebuilt.

Newer showrooms, hotels, and casinos were left to carry on the tradition, including Siegel’s Flamingo.

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