Reno and Las Vegas: Their Marked Differences
Reno lay closer to the mining heritage of the Comstock Lode and as the state's leading city had a greater sense of Nevada tradition.
It lived in the shadows of neither Boulder Dam nor Los Angeles; if it identified with any other city, it was San Francisco, with its 'sinful' Barbary Coast.
Unabashed Reno had few qualms about the 'divorce trade', particularly during the hard times of the 1920s and 1930s.
The local economy was clearly bolstered by the traffic in marital separations. Reno residents of the 1930s accepted this business with a sense of detachment and self-satisfaction.
Neither proud or ashamed of the peculiar economic staple, they took divorce, and the nation's condemnations, in stride.
Unlike Las Vegas, which, Renoites thought, debased itself with gimmicks in an effort to become 'what the week-end visitors from Los Angeles and Hollywood would want Las Vegas to be', Reno calmly accepted the legacy bequeathed by Nevada tradition and exploited it with few second thoughts.
The public equated Reno with divorce, and Renoites accepted that connotation happily, but when Las Vegas came to be identified with gambling, residents seemed reluctant to accept such a reputation.
Las Vegans tried to mold their town into what they expected tourists would want. On occasion, they admitted that gambling and prostitution were major attractions.
However, those activities assumed secondary status in their picture of what Las Vegas should be--- a tourist stop that utilized the motif of the last frontier and offered recreational opportunities consistent with the spirit of the old West.
Tourists could see the sights, partake of convenient marriage and divorce, and enjoy the freedom of the great outdoors, as well as visit the gambling halls and bawdy houses.
Each activity was seen as another dose of the frontier for visitors.
Las Vegans understandably felt no compulsion to base the promotion of their community solely upon the enterprise of gambling.
In addition to a reluctance that doubtless derived from American's traditional ambivalence toward the activity, they had no similar examples of gambling resorts for tourists, other than such exclusive spas as Saratoga, New York, and Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Moreover, Las Vegas through the mid-1930s remained isolated and provincial, little more than railroad division point and gateway to Hoover Dam.
Residents naturally hitched their fortunes to the tourist potential of the dam, the very project that had so forcefully revitalized the town during the 1930s.
As a result of this cautious perspective, gambling developed in but a limited fashion as an economic force during the decade.
Both during and after construction of the dam, city commissioners restricted the number of licenses the town could issue to casinos, just as they curtailed the number of permits to liquor stores and taverns.
Those interested in operating gambling clubs easily evaded the law by setting up shop outside city limits, but the restriction nonetheless typified a lack of confidence in the business of gaming.