Guy McAfee had spent more than $1 million to open the Golden Nugget on August 30, 1946. For a man who had spent the previous decade running illegal gambling operations out of a nightclub on the Sunset Strip while simultaneously commanding the Los Angeles Police Department's vice squad, it must have felt like a relief to finally do things above board.
McAfee had come to Las Vegas in 1939 after a reform mayor swept into office in Los Angeles with a mandate to clean up exactly the kind of operation McAfee was running. He left on his own terms, or close enough. "I came to Las Vegas because I'm happily married, have a great sized stake and have decided to operate in a community where my business of gambling is a legal proposition," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "No one ran me out of Los Angeles."
Nobody believed him, but nobody could prove otherwise either.
For the Golden Nugget's interior, McAfee demanded fixtures fifty years or older, importing Victorian carved wood and Italian marble to fashion a decor based on the original Golden Nugget bar in San Francisco's Barbary Coast during the Comstock silver rush. The message was clear: this wasn't a roadside joint. It was the largest gambling house in Las Vegas at the time, and McAfee wanted you to feel that the moment you walked in.
In 1949, McAfee built a 100-foot neon sign and proclaimed the Golden Nugget the brightest nightspot in the world. On Fremont Street, in a corridor already famous for its neon, that was a serious claim. He was probably right.
McAfee died in 1960. By then the Strip he had named after his old stomping grounds in Los Angeles had long since eclipsed downtown, and the Golden Nugget needed someone with a different kind of ambition.
In 1972, Steve Wynn bought a stake in the property and became CEO in 1973. He was the youngest casino owner in Las Vegas. Where McAfee had built something grand and let it settle into itself, Wynn tore into it. He started a $2 million renovation and in 1977 opened the casino's first hotel tower. The Golden Nugget stopped being a gambling hall and started being a destination.
It's still there today, still on Fremont Street, still carrying the name McAfee gave it. The property now features a lagoon-like swimming pool that circles a three-story shark tank, and houses the Hand of Faith, a six-pound gold nugget said to be the largest still in existence.
McAfee came to Las Vegas to run a legal casino and ended up naming the Strip, building one of the city's most enduring properties, and dying before he could see what it would eventually become. Not a bad run for a crooked cop from Los Angeles.
