For all the fuss that surrounds the Flamingo , the New Frontier is the oldest casino still surviving on the Strip. In fact, although it opened in 1942, a year after the long-vanished El Rancho Vegas , it incorporated Guy McAfee's Pair-O-Dice Club , which had in 1938 become the first gambling joint on Las Vegas Boulevard. Originally named the Last Frontier , it started out as a glorified hundred-room motel that milked its desert setting for every possible drop of Old West appeal. The decor was a deliberate combination of crude log-cabin trimmings with glittering neon, marketed under the slogan "the Early West in Modern Splendor." There was even a theme park alongside, Last Frontier Village.
The Little Church of the West, now serving as a wedding chapel at 4617 Las Vegas Blvd S, was once the centerpiece of Last Frontier Village.
The Last Frontier reinvented itself as the space-age New Frontier in 1955, and played host to Elvis Presley's first disastrous Las Vegas appearance the following year. In 1965, it was bulldozed and completely rebuilt, with a Western theme once again. That wholesale reconstruction did not extend, however, to getting rid of the Mob presence with which it had become permeated, and the Mafia continued in covert control for several years even after the hotel was acquired by Howard Hughes in 1967. Hughes was living in the Desert Inn across the street, and is said to have bought the New Frontier because he was alarmed that its new sign, at 184 feet the tallest in the world, might blow down and hit his home. That same worrisome sign still stands outside the New Frontier , looking deeply old-fashioned with its staid movie-theater lettering and tame slogans: "choice beef, poultry and seafood at affordable prices."
Current New Frontier owner Phil Ruffin announced plans in January 2000 to implode the entire property and replace it with a billion-dollar, San Francisco-themed megacasino. This, however, seems unlikely to happen unless and until Steve Wynn's Desert Inn project revitalizes this quiescent segment of the Strip.
For the moment, the New Frontier is the last Strip property where it's still possible to park your car in the front lot, while the casino itself - sorry, "Gambling Hall" - remains locked in the Wild West tradition. A chuckwagon waits outside for its owner to return, and you're confronted immediately through the saloon-style doors by vintage slot machines in the shape of John Wayne and other gunslingers.
The New Frontier has long identified its market as the kind of ageing cowboys and cowgirls who get their kicks from knocking back tequila at Margarita's Mexican Cantina and paying rock-bottom prices for barbecued chicken in the Cattleman's Buffet . Surprisingly, however, the actual hotel behind this down-at-heel veneer is a sleek, new edifice of gleaming reflective glass. Surrounded by tousled palm trees and topped by green roof tiles, it wouldn't look out of place on an exclusive Hawaiian beach. Not all the rooms live up to that promise, but the two-room suites in the Atrium Tower are good by any standards.
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