The Plaza\u2019s Amtrak station (above) is now a break room for hotel employees (below). (Images; Wikipedia and Google Street View)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhen the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad was completed in 1905, its owners decided to create a stop halfway through the long haul and build a town to make that stop worthwhile. Las Vegas, named in 1829 by a Spanish trader after the meadows created by underground springs, would do. It was home only to a few ranches and an abandoned Mormon fort at the time.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe railroad bought the ranches closest to its railroad stop, then sold parcels at an auction on Fremont and Main Streets on May 15, 1905. The first was at 1 Fremont St., which the builder of the Hotel Nevada purchased for $1,750. Today, that hotel still stands as the Golden Gate, and still has the town\u2019s very first phone on display. (It\u2019s phone number was \u201c1.\u201d)<\/p>\n
The original railroad station was demolished in the late 1930s and replaced with an Art Deco update in 1940. That station was demolished in 1971 and replaced by today\u2019s Plaza Hotel, originally called Union Plaza, in deference to the railroad.<\/p>\n
\n
Because passenger trains shared the line with freight trains then, the hotel constructed its own station out back \u2014 the only one in the US located inside a casino. By then, the line was run by Amtrak. Its last passenger route from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, the Desert Wind, was discontinued in 1997 due to low ridership. (Because the tracks were shared, a passenger train stuck behind a freight train could easily take 8 hours from LA to Las Vegas, more than twice as long as driving did.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Though its branding and furnishings are gone, the Plaza\u2019s Amtrak station still exists by the tracks. It\u2019s now an employee break room and storage area. But an Amtrak mural can still be found between a Subway and a gym at the end of a hallway.<\/p>\n
\u201cLost Vegas\u201d is an occasional\u00a0Casino.org<\/em>\u00a0series spotlighting Las Vegas\u2019 forgotten history.\u00a0Click here<\/a>\u00a0to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The history of Las Vegas has an unusual adversary: The people who own its landmarks. Every time Las Vegas explodes, it seems, it implodes first. Virtually nothing from the Strip’s early history — the Desert Inn, Sands, Dunes, Stardust, and now even the Tropicana — still stands. Though the Neon Museum is a great place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":326796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81886],"tags":[84317,91890,23,89675,91891,91888,89261,91889],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
LOST VEGAS: Hidden Relics of Sin City\u2019s Past You Can Still See - Casino.org<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n