Encountering the Desert City
The mid-1960s marked a turning point in the history of modern Las Vegas.
For two decades following the Second World War, life in southern Nevada had reflected the abundance and optimism of American society.
In visits to the resort, players had tasted the fuller, easier, more stimulating future that seemed to await a confident and prosperous people.
Analogously, in choosing the gambling capital as a hometown, Las Vegans had staked their claim to the blessings that belonged to the Sunbelt.
By the mid-1970s, however, both groups were encountering the end of yet another frontier as American society, and its gambling culture entered a new phase.
Near the epicenter of Southern California culture, the eruption of the Watts riots of 1965 and the heightened awareness of air pollution in Los Angeles constituted the first shocks that threatened the foundations of an affluent society.
These coincided with tremors across the country that by 1975, had undermined Americans' view of the future as nothing other than a richer version of the present.
A divisive war and a reckless executive shook the nation's faith in its place in the world as well as its leadership, while the social, economic, and environmental costs of Cold War consensus and prosperity exacted an ever more painful toll from the country's well-being.
Las Vegas survived the changes of the late sixties and early seventies in better shape than the rest of the nation by continuing to grow and prosper.
Even a town based upon fantasy, however, could not help but feel the reality if each of the risks that loomed in the years ahead.
Threatened natural resources and increasing fuel prices brought environmental dilemmas home to a city that had long denied the constraints of its desert climate and remote location.
Once reputedly impervious to hard times, Las Vegas appeared more vulnerable to strikes and recessions.
Furthermore, as other states turned to gambling as a source of revenue during economic straits, Nevada lost its monopoly in legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City.
New Jersey, served to punctuate the end of an era in American betting culture. The historical significance of this eastern resort lay not so much in the competition that it represented for Las Vegas, but rather in the perspective that it lent to those styles of gambling that had developed in successive American Wests.
Atlantic City helped to usher in a different approach to public and commercial gambling, a style that had little to do with western society.
The rise of casino gaming on the East Coast seemed to shorten the horizons of Las Vegas, but the resort's prospects remained solid.
By the time the first casino opened its doors in Atlantic City in 1978, the business of gambling in Las Vegas had undergone dramatic changes for more than a decade.