LOST VEGAS: The Thunderbird Casino

Posted on: April 18, 2025, 10:10h. 

Last updated on: April 18, 2025, 11:02h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

In 1947, attorney Cliff Jones and his business partner, Marion Hicks, began building the fourth casino resort on Highway 91, which would in a few years be known as the Las Vegas Strip. Jones, who also happened to be Nevada’s lieutenant governor, was nicknamed “Big Juice” for his ability to get stuff done through political connections.

The Thunderbird Hotel and Casino is photographed in its 1950s heyday. (Image: UNLV Special Collections)

Their property would sit across from the Strip’s first casino resort, the El Rancho Vegas, and about a mile north of the year-old Flamingo. It would cost them $3 million to complete (about $43 million today).


Nevada Lt. Governor Cliff Jones and his partner in the Thunderbird, Marion Hicks. (Images: findagrave.com and the Mob Museum)

Named for a mythological Navajo creature, the Thunderbird blended Las Vegas’ dominant Old West motif with Native American symbolism.

Early visitors to the Strip remember its neon-outlined Thunderbird taking flight from the three-story tower on the roof. (When a new, roadside marquee was installed a few years later, so was a second Thunderbird.) The property also boasted the Strip’s first covered front porte-cochère.

Worst Opening Night Ever

Unfortunately, the Thunderbird is best remembered for having the worst opening night in the history of casinos. On Sept. 2, 1948, it had to pay out a winning streak of $145K (about $2 million today) on craps, leading to the myth that it went bust and had to close before beginning its second day.

In reality, it was already a secret subsidiary of the deep-pocketed New York mob when it opened. A concealed $160K investment in the resort was made in 1947 by George Sadlo, a front for mafia chieftain Meyer Lansky’s younger brother. (Jake Lansky made frequent trips to the Thunderbird to check up on proceeds from its hidden skim.)

The Thunderbird had a good run of seven years. Its 650-seat showroom hosted the Sin City debuts of both Patti Page (1948) and Rosemary Clooney (1951), and the hotel reportedly played host to overnight guests including billionaire Howard Hughes and Nevada’s US Senator Pat McCarran, who used it as his base of operations while in town.

The Thunderbird is pictured with its original 1948 marquee. (Image: UNLV Special Collections)

The House Loses Again

But this heyday lasted only until 1955. That’s when the Nevada Tax Commission revoked the Thunderbird’s gambling license and removed Jones and Hicks from the operation. The court case was initiated after an investigation by Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun uncovered Sadlo’s investment, and was the impetus for the state legislature’s creation of today’s Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB).

Though the court’s decision was eventually overturned and the Thunderbird’s license restored, its reputation never entirely recovered. It found new life as an alternative to the higher-class Sands and Tropicana for middle-class tourists on a budget.

A conga line of new owners began in 1964, when the Thunderbird was sold to Del Webb, a partner in the Sahara next door, for $10 million. The operators of Caesars Palace then purchased it for $13 million in 1972. Then came Parry Thomas, a banker who repossessed the property.

In 1977, casino veteran Major Riddle took over, changing the Thunderbird’s name to the Silverbird to align it with his other silver-themed properties, the Silver Nugget and Silver City, because the Thunderbird name had become associated with poor food and tight slots. He also removed both Thunderbird sculptures.

Its final owner was Aladdin partner Ed Torres, who paid $25 million for the property in 1982. Confusing almost everyone to this day, he renamed it after the original El Rancho, which burned to the ground in 1960 and was never rebuilt.

In 1988, Torres added a 13-story hotel tower that failed to generate a buzz, then finally pulled the plug four years later.

31 Years of Sad

In November 1993, an LA-based TV production company bought the abandoned 21-acre property for $36.5M, promising to redevelop and reopen it as El Rancho’s Countryland USA. According to its plans, it would have featured two 20-story hotel towers that mimicked cowboy boots.

The Thunderbird ended its life as an abandoned eyesore named after a resort it could never live up to, and featuring a marquee promising a resort that would never be built. (Image: UNLV Special Collections)

The project never found financial footing. Instead, the property languished for eight years as an abandoned eyesore until it was demolished by Turnberry Associates, which bought the property for $45 million in 1999 to replace it with a London-themed resort … that also never happened.

All this sadness was a mild foreshadowing of what took place on this very lot starting in February 2007.

That’s when construction began on the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, before it stopped in 2009 and didn’t resume again until 2021, serving for another dozen years as a constant reminder of the toll taken on Las Vegas by the Great Recession.

“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.