From the Las Vegas Photo File: Las Vegas Park

Sixty-nine years ago this Sunday, the facility pictured above, in mid-construction — a horse-racing track — opened where the Las Vegas County Club now sits. It’s a story with all the now-familiar Sin City trimmings: grand ambition and unfounded confidence; shady dealings, probable embezzlement, and, of course, great copy: Asked in court about receipts for missing funds, one developer reportedly quipped, “You ever try to pay a politician with a check?”



Despite its construction-phrase turmoil, Las Vegas Park opened on September 4, 1953, in very Vegas style: “In the grandstand and clubhouse, chorus girls mingled with housewives, hotel owners with bartenders,” the Las Vegas Sun reported. But while some 75 horses ran races that day, a paltry crowd of just 8,200 showed up to a facility optimistically designed to handle 20,000. Much of the equipment didn’t work. Tellingly, the $250,000 wagered that day fell considerably short of the daily handle needed to support the operation.



Las Vegas Park shut down shortly afterward. By some accounts, there were just 13 total days of actual horse racing that year. Another short-lived attempt was made in 1954, and a few cars and motorcycles raced there in the 1960s. Now it’s a golf course.



In hindsight, despite dreaming big, Las Vegas was simply too small. “Racing needs population,” one journalist wrote, “and although Las Vegas does not hew to convention in very many ways, it is still not quite fabulous enough to sustain a track as pretentious as this one hoped to be.” [Las Vegas Sun, Thoroughbred Racing Commentary]



➕ The sequel: In 1981, the Las Vegas Downs track opened in Henderson, first with greyhound racing but with horses planned to arrive eventually. They didn’t, and the track failed. [KSNV]