LOST VEGAS: Las Vegas Park Horse Track Stood Where Elvis AND The Beatles Would Perform

Las Vegas Mungo Park opened 70 years ago this week. And you canful easy follow forgiven for ne'er having heard of the one-mile horse track that was located on the site of today’s Las Vegas Country Club, Las Vegas Convention Center, and Westgate Hotel.

That’s because it operated for a tot up of 13 days.

Las Vegas Mungo Park opened with whale aspirations on Sept. 4, 1953 for a 67-day initiative meet. Its loser to fulfil those aspirations, or fifty-fifty to all over that schedule, is legendary.

It Seemed Like a Good Bet

Las Vegas’ nativity as an amusement and gambling mecca dovetailed perfectly with the ‘50s roaring inward Thoroughbred racing. In fact, Las Vegas Park even out made account as America’s world-class racino. (The Las Vegas Gaming Commission permitted 165 slots at the racetrack.)

It was gorgeous for its day, too. The club and grandstand were painted pinkish to replicate Argentina’s Hipodromo Rosado. Virtually no more disbursal was spared in its $4.5 1000000 budget (more than $40 trillion today).

And its schedule fit neatly mediate the destruction of the Del Mar rush encounter and the bulge out of the Hollywood Park meeting.

This cartroad seemed same a trusted bet to innkeeper 1 of the premier Kentucky Derby prep races.

So how did something so hone slip up come out of the gate?

Major Blinders

Before the cart track of all time opened, it already had a backstory tainted past corruption, embezzlement, and major blinders.

That backstory began with Chief Joseph M. Smoot — a New House of York racing plugger who had an too soon helping hand inward the success of the Santa Anita and Hialeah racetracks, and figured that meant he could come anything.

In 1948, Smoot purchased 750 acres of vacant terra firma just E of the Strip from the Leigh James Henry Leigh Hunt demesne at $750 per acre, and began constructing his dream a yr later.

But a small more than a year after that, Smoot woke up inward a nightmare. He was charged with triad counts of embezzling $24K from the Las Vegas Thoroughbred Racing Association, o'er which he presided. During a hearing, a federal courtroom judge  reportedly asked Smoot to create receipts or canceled checks for $500K that reportedly went missing without a trace.

Smoot responded: “You of all time assay to compensate a pol with a check?”

Smoot remained below indictment until he died of instinctive causes inward 1955, penniless, in a unloosen elbow room at the Grand Hotel.

Second Race

By 1953, Las Vegas Mungo Park was bought out of its first off bankruptcy and completed past the Las Vegas Jockey Club, a young corp headed past investors including Lou David Roland Smith and Al Luke. Counting on a ton of big-name horses, and their big-spending Southern Calif. owners, the partners promised to award $1.9 1000000 — the richest treasure ever so offered past a first-year track.

To take their bets, they opened the very number 1 $500 betting window at a horse track.

When Las Vegas Mungo Park finally opened that Sept. 4, some of the horses came. (Among the 75 that ran was 15-time stakes winner Blue Reading.) But the big spenders were mostly AWOL. A devastatingly low-toned use up of $252,683 fell nearly $150K little of the $400K day-by-day requirement for the racetrack to foregather expenses.

And the local universe couldn’t still fill up the seats left wing past absentee tourists. Mark Clark County had only if 50,000 residents back up then, compared to nearly 3.3 gazillion today. In all, 8,200 paying customers occupied a space designed to take hold 20,000.

Malfunctioning fine booths, only if 1 entranceway that worked, and a major malfunction of the infield tote gameboard didn’t aid matters. After its tertiary twenty-four hours open, the cartroad closed for ii weeks piece a replacing room was installed, erasing what small impulse and word-of-mouth chess opening 24-hour interval generated.

After Las Vegas Mungo Park reopened, it didn’t lumber a bingle break-even day. When 4,000 customers wagered a number of $100K on Oct. 10, old stager racing journalist Pete Bonamy called it “one of the poorest showings past a racing gang ever recorded.”

Las Vegas Mungo Park closed in(p) on Oct. 19, 1953, after racing only if 13 programs.

“Racing needs population,” columnist Leon Rasmussen wrote in Thoroughbred Record mag at the time, “and although Las Vegas does non hew out to normal inward really many ways, it is still non quite a fabulous sufficiency to maintain a cartroad as pretentious as this 1 hoped to be.”

Beating a Dead Horse Track

Its stables were vacated inwards October 1953, though the composite was revived for another little but failed horseracing tally the next year. The daily attendance recorded by the Las Vegas Turf Club inwards December 1954 was even to a greater extent dismal than its predecessor — at times as low-toned as 400. That experimentation lasted sevener weeks.

By Jan 1955, an oil color magnate bought the racetrack come out of its arcsecond failure for $2.65 million. But Joe W. Brown didn’t destine to establish a third failed horseracing track. His thing was purchasing properties to throw onto for others. Two years earlier, he purchased the Horseshoe Club from his old Lone-Star State buddy, Benny Binion, so he could ladder it spell Binion served tetrad years inwards Leavenworth Penitentiary for task evasion.

And Robert Brown purchased Las Vegas Mungo Park for a similar reason. He was holding onto it patch the City of Las Vegas and Kenneth Clark County got its ducks inward a row. Civic leaders wanted a portion of the soil to build what eventually became the Las Vegas Convention Center, but didn’t feature the funding at the time.

By Jan 1956, that sell was fill out and the firstly convening center — a 6,300-capacity, silver-domed rotunda with an adjoining 90,000 square-foot exhibition hall — opened next Brown’s expiry leash years later. On Aug. 20, 1964, it hosted the only when Beatles concert staged inwards Las Vegas.

Vroom For Rent

While it awaited demolition, the renamed and relieve mostly inviolate Las Vegas Park Speedway was repurposed for auto racing. It hosted triad major races: the AAA Champ Car case inwards 1954, the NASCAR Grand National Championship in 1955, and a United States Auto Club Grand Prix in 1959.

It also achieved cinematic immortality past serving as the background for a racecar shot inward the 1964 Elvis Elvis Presley movie, “Viva Las Vegas.”

In 1965, Brown’s landed estate sold most of the remaining holding to National Equities Inc., which later used it to make the Las Vegas Country Club along Joe. W. Robert Brown Drive. Another 20 acres were sold to Clark County to spread out the Convention Center.

Las Vegas Mungo Park was eventually demolished in 1966. group A year later, National Equities sold 65 of its former acres to Caesars Palace landlord Kirk Kerkorian to build the International Hotel — which meant that Las Vegas Park would enter chronicle for a to a greater extent unexpected reason…

Both Elvis and the Beatles would single day do where it one time stood.

“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series featuring remembrances of Las Vegas’ lesser-known history. Click here to record other entries in the series. Think you cognise a upright Vegas story missed to history? Email corey@casino.org.

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