VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: The El Rancho Vegas’ Origin Story

Posted on: February 24, 2025, 07:55h. 

Last updated on: February 24, 2025, 12:31h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.
  • The El Rancho, founded by Thomas Everett Hull, is considered Las Vegas’ first true Strip casino hotel
  • Opened in 1941, the property had a storied history until it was destroyed by fire in 1960
  • Today, the property serves as the Las Vegas Festival Grounds

One day in 1938 or 1939, Thomas Everett Hull — who owned the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel as well as two motels called El Rancho in California — was driving Highway 91 (today known as the Las Vegas Strip) when his car either broke down or got a flat. (There are different versions of this.)

Thomas Hull, inset, and his El Rancho Vegas are both pictured in 1941. Designed by noted architect Wayne McAllister, the hotel was built at a cost of $425K ($9.5 million today). (Images: UNLV Special Collections)

While waiting for a tow truck in the scorching sun near San Francisco (today’s Sahara) Avenue, Hull counted how many dozens of cars drove by and reasoned that a third El Rancho — built right here, with a pool visible from the highway — would entice many of these exhausted, overheated motorists to stop and stay. (This was 10 years before most cars had A/C.)

El Rancho Vegas’ neon -rimmed windmill could be seen for miles along the road that it helped become the Las Vegas Strip. (Image: UNLV Special Collections)

Myth Understood

If this sounds familiar, it’s because car trouble is also what led Bugsy Siegel to the land on which he dreamed up, then built, his Flamingo in a similar myth — one that appeared in 1991’s “Bugsy” even though everyone associated with the film knew the truth by then: that the Flamingo was the dream of Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson, who even named it, though a gambling problem caused him to run out of construction money and unwisely take out a loan from Bugsy’s crew.

The origin story of the Las Vegas Strip’s first real casino resort was way less Hollywood than any of that.

It wasn’t even Hull who envisioned Las Vegas as the site for a third El Rancho. It was his friend and financier, San Diego businessman Jack Barkley, who came up with the idea and had to talk him into it, according to UNLV historian David Schwartz’s new book, “Something for Your Money: A History of Las Vegas Casinos.”

Early customers play on the El Rancho’s sole roulette wheel. (Image: UNLV Special Collections)

Soon, Hull set out looking for the perfect location with “Big” Jim Cashman, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce’s most influential member and the man for whom Cashman Field would later be named.

Cashman suggested a plot where today’s Sahara Avenue intersects with Maryland Parkway, but Hull passed. He wanted El Rancho Vegas to occupy the road leading into town.

A half-century before Steve Wynn had a similar idea, Hull wanted it to appear like a mirage on the horizon as travelers approached from miles away.

Betting the Rancho

On the southwest corner of the Arrowhead Highway’s intersection with San Francisco Avenue — in the Clark County-governed sticks outside the city — 33 acres were available on the cheap.

They were owned by a Mrs. Jessie Hunt, who had no idea she was about to engage in one of the most historic land transactions in the history of Las Vegas. Otherwise, she most certainly would have demanded more than $4,950 in total ($112K today).

An early postcard from the resort exhorts motorists to “stop at the sign of the windmill.” (Image: El Rancho Vegas)

Hull was a hotel man, so his original plans didn’t even call for a casino. In an oral history interview conducted by UNLV, John Cahlan, the managing editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the time, said that it was an afterthought suggested by “several of his friends he had made here in Las Vegas.” (Our money is on Cashman.)

Check out the wagon-wheel chandeliers in the El Rancho’s Round-Up Room, which was renovated and renamed the Opera House Theater in 1947. (Image: UNLV Special Collections)

The western-themed El Rancho Vegas opened on April 3, 1941. There were other casinos that had beaten it to Highway 91. The Red Rooster and Pair O’ Dice both opened there as restaurant/nightclubs in 1930 and added casinos when gambling was legalized a year later.

But El Rancho Vegas’ casino was the largest, with 70 slot machines, two blackjack tables, one roulette wheel and a craps table. And its 63-cottage hotel, with fabled swimming pool, made it the Strip’s first official casino resort. (Sorry again, “Bugsy,” but the Flamingo came third, in 1946, after the El Rancho and the Last Frontier, which opened in 1942.)

El Rancho Dressing

Jimmy Durante (seated) and Sophie Tucker, with an unidentified male friend, at the El Rancho in 1955. (Image: El Rancho Vegas postcard)

Hull’s resort opened with its own fancy dining room and 300-seat showroom. Bandleader Garwood Van and his orchestra were the Round-Up Room’s first headliner. They performed for one month that turned into 13. A full troupe of showgirls, dressed in skimpy western attire, opened the shows.

Eventually, Hull used his Hollywood connections to rope in more prominent performers including Jimmy Durante, Guy Lombardo, Jackie Gleason, Sophie Tucker, and Peggy Lee. The shows grew so popular that, sometimes, other A-list celebrities couldn’t get in.

“I don’t want to see no goddamned show, I just want to have dinner!” beefed Wallace Beery, winner of the 1931 best actor Oscar for his lead role in “The Champ,” when denied a table. (According to the Las Vegas Sun, Beery had one set up for his family poolside instead.)

In 1946, even more history was made at the El Rancho when Hull opened the Chuck Wagon, later rebranded as the Buckaroo Buffet, thus introducing the very first buffet to Las Vegas.

Up in Smoke

In 1948, Hull leased the El Rancho to a group of investors that included Jake Katleman. After Katleman died in 1950, his nephew, Beldon Katelman, assumed the lease and exercised his uncle’s option to purchase the property 10 years later.

The iconic windmill topples in the flames of June 17, 1960. (Image: clarkcountynv.gov)

The El Rancho closed following a devastating fire on June 17, 1960. The 6:30 a.m. blaze quickly destroyed the building housing the casino, showroom, and restaurants. Fortunately, there were no fatalities and all guests were safely evacuated. They included movie star Betty Grable, who was starring in a lavish revue that took its final bows the night before.

Singer Pearl Bailey, who was leaving an interview she had just given to Channel 13 — then located behind the El Rancho — backed her car into a tree while trying to escape in the thick smoke.

Thomas Hull died four years later. Initial reports had Beldon Katleman planning to rebuild the El Rancho even bigger than it once was. But, like so many big Vegas plans, those never materialized. Instead, the El Rancho’s abandoned cottages languished in the fenced-off lot, serving various makeshift purposes, including storage, until they were demolished or moved in the 1970s.

No other casino resort was ever built on the site, which today functions as billionaire casino magnate Phil Ruffin’s Las Vegas Festival Grounds.

Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on  Casino.org. Visit  VegasMythsBusted.com to read previously busted Vegas myths. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.