Obtaining an unlimited gaming license in Nevada isn’t easy.  The Gaming Control Board does months and months of investigation into an applicant’s past.  No stone goes unturned.  Youthful mistakes can keep a potential owner from opening for business.  Instead of customers deciding who has the requisite morals to plug in the slot machines and roll out the green felt, government gumshoes and politically-appointed wise ones decide who is worthy.  Casino patrons must be protected.

Legend has it that Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was driving through the desert, envisioned an oasis, built the Flamingo, and created Las Vegas. That’s not the way it happened.

Casino gambling was legalized in 1931, and Siegel’s Flamingo flopped when it opened in December 1946, after successful premiers of other hotels. “In reality,” John L. Smith explains in his book Sharks in the Desert, “[Meyer] Lansky and several lesser-known racketeers, together with some plain old transplanted gamblers, played much greater roles than Siegel.”

One of those gamblers was Benny Binion, who left his Dallas bookmaking and racketeering empire and set out for Las Vegas in 1946 with his wife and children. Binion’s Horseshoe Club in downtown Las Vegas was a fixture from its opening in 1951 until his daughter, Becky, ran it into the ground in 2004.

The ability of gamblers and bookmakers to leave their clandestine operations behind in the east to re-open them unfettered in the bright sunshine of Las Vegas ended in 1955, when the Nevada Legislature founded the Nevada Gaming Control Board and the Nevada Gaming Commission.  Some long-time Nevadans observe that the Silver State has gone down hill ever since.

While Las Vegas was settled by gamblers and made men, Nevada’s newest licensee is a 65-year old singer/songwriter who turned 15 minutes of inspiration into a business empire.  Applicant James W. Buffett penned a little ditty back in 1977 called “Margaritaville,” that would spawn a happy-hour movement of the middle-aged.  The parrothead anthem has blossomed into an unmistakable brand for Buffett’s retail stores, restaurants, consumer products, and now, casinos.

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