Although outwardly routine the action brought down the curtain on the presence of howard r.
Howard hughes top floor vegas casino.
The guest was howard hughes and he was ailing in body and mind.
He was frightened and looking for a place to hide.
Once so powerful his attempt to buy the stardust in 1968 was.
The year 1966 brought las vegas good news when billionaire howard hughes arrived quietly and began buying casinos and real estate.
Howard hughes had bought his first.
Hughes in the casino and resort industry.
Hughes rode in on a fortune.
On thanksgiving day 1966 the desert inn hotel casino in las vegas nevada reserved its entire top floor to a well known but never seen guest and the vegas strip and the city of las vegas would never be the same.
Depending on which story you believe and there are a million stories about howard hughes our man moved into the desert inn below on arriving in las vegas then having refused to vacate his room at the end of his stay bought the hotel outright and turned the top floor into his personal headquarters.
Hughes had previously purchased other las vegas hotels and casinos he had a strong desire to glamorize las vegas and invested heavily.
What hughes didn t know didn t matter and he went on a buying spree that included the frontier casino for 14 million from the r.
He would de mob las vegas make the city safe for legitimate business.
The eccentric billionaire it was speculated was on a mission.
When howard hughes slipped into las vegas on a special union pacific train on the night of november 27 1966 and took up his bizarre residence on the top floor of the desert inn hughes had already become an eccentric and increasingly mysterious recluse.
Howard hughes was one of the brightest figures in las vegas neon history.
Stretching over 1 500 square feet on the hotel s top floor the howard hughes loft suite includes a king bed aviation memorabilia a screening room and breathtaking views of the baie de saint jean.
One of the more notable and certainly most visible ways in which hughes would use his money to cultivate his immediate environment to his liking was the 1968 purchase of the silver slipper casino in las vegas.
But he came to las vegas under the cover of darkness during thanksgiving weekend in 1966.
Hughes made the nation think las vegas was clean but the irs would later say that hughes had been the victim of a vast mob skim topping 50 million.
Mob activity declined during hughes four years in las vegas partly because he bought out many of the old timers but more.