The Marked Efficiencies of the Last Frontier

The growth of the new 'roadtown' district would ultimately split Las Vegas in two by introducing architectural and geographic diversity.

At first, it did not challenge the prevailing stereotypes of the old West.

The first two resort hotels erected along the Strip in the early 1940--- El Rancho Vegas, and the Last Frontier, were named with the untamed West in mind, and both were fashioned in styles similar to downtown clubs.

El Rancho Vegas featured several one-story buildings of wood and stone composition that sprawled over a wide lot alongside the highway. A local attorney compared the ranch-like complex to 'a Spanish village in a desert setting'.

The recreation included a casino, dining room, bar, main hotel structure, pool, and guest cottages, all surrounded by green lawns.

Brick chimneys topped all the buildings and range-style wooden fences enclosed the grounds. Interiors were adorned with open beams, wood paneling, mounted trophies, fringed leather drapes, and paintings of the historic American West.

A windmill tower stood atop the hotel office, and the slogan 'Howdy, podner, come as you are' greeted tourists.

With stylings such as these, El Rancho Vegas suggested that the last-frontier motif so popular in downtown Las Vegas might reach new heights in the underdeveloped expanses along the highway to Southern California.

Western styles of architecture, however, never really developed extensively on the Strip. They did appear there on occasion, thereby preserving the tenuous connection between the two districts.

Up until the opening of the Riviera hotel in 1955, most establishments followed the low-slung, ranch-style pattern of construction begun by El Rancho Vegas and the Last Frontier.

But as befitted resort hotels, rather than just plain casinos, the newer buildings generally shed the wood and stone exteriors, the brick chimneys, and the cattle men's fences.

Most of the decorative motifs inside and out drew inspiration not from the American West, but from African deserts, Mediterranean resorts, or tropicals settings.

Hotel bars in particular paid homage to the bygone West in their ornamentation, no doubt inspired by Americans' mythology about the hard-drinking cowboys scenes on the American prairie, and the Navajo dining room at the Thunderbird featured Indian styles of decor and open wooden beams.

The Last Frontier, however, exceeded all other Strip hotels in using wester styles. It even created a hollow replica of a real frontier town complete with a museum of artifacts from the historic west.

Such were exceptions, for the most part, among the numerous motifs that characterized the Strip.

Mean while, the past lived on in downtown Las Vegas where advocates of the last frontier idea seemed virtually oblivious to its rejection on the Strip.

Throughout the postwar period, the motif of the old West lent to the central district a unity that reinforced the lingering impact of the railroad's shaping.