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117 Fremont
Las Vegas, NV
Lucky Casino
May 6,
1963 to 1967
The Lucky Casino opened on
May 6, 1963 after a four-month remodeling job in the former Lucky Strike Club location.
The remodeling included a new second-story bingo parlor and the city's only escalator.
Al Garbian was the general manager of Lucky Casino at the time of its opening.
His career included being an executive in the early days of the Sahara, Fremont, Aladdin, Hacienda and California hotels.
He opened the Lucky Strike downtown in 1954 with Milton Prell’s Prewin Foundation and owned the Carousel in the early 1970s.
Garbian was born Nov. 6, 1912, in New York City and raised in Southern California. He lived in Las Vegas for 54 years before passing away there Feb 21, 2001.
The all new Lucky Casino’s grand opening celebration was held on Thursday, May 16, 1963.
There were cash prizes totaling more than $10,000 and grand prize of $1000 which was awarded on May 29, 1963
There were also daily drawings where the winner could win their weight at the rate of one silver dollar per pound!
The 17 story tall Lucky Casino sign gives the Golden Nugget and the Horseshoe
a run for the money in bright and gaudy downtown Las Vegas signage.
When the 17 story tall Lucky Casino sign was erected by the Young Electric Sign company in 1963 it weighed in at 60 tons, had three miles of neon tubing, and more than 11,000 lamps.
Have you ever wondered what the top of the Lucky Casino sign looked like?
I was lucky enough to buy this original slide from 1965 with an aerial view that shows a close-up.
The view down South 1st St. also includes the Pioneer Club Hotel, Von Tobel Lumber, and the Bank of Nevada.
Lucky Casino Grand Opening Celebration advertisement from
the Henderson Home News on May, 16,1963
Another perspective of the
Lucky Casino sign in 1966
with the California Club
in the foreground.
Christmas greetings from an ad in the Fabulous Las Vegas Magazine issue of Dec. 26, 1964
Below is a rare color photo of the Lucky Casino sign construction by the Young Electric Sign Company
from the Marian Honeycut Collection at UNLV Special Collections.
A great original tourist slide of the Golden Nugget, Lucky Casino, and Diamond Jim’s Nevada Club from 1965.
This beautiful full color pictorial guide to Las Vegas from 1964 features the casinos of downtown Las Vegas
including the Lucky Casino, Horseshoe, Mint, Golden Nugget, Las Vegas Club, Fremont, Golden Gate, and Pioneer.
Over50Vegas.com by Over50Vegas.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://over50vegas.com/index.html.
This is a non-commercial, educational, hobby site. Images on this site are from our personal collection and from personal collections of fellow enthusiasts who have shared their scans with us. Other images are noted by source with links to the original. If you feel that any image used here has infringed upon fair use of an image you hold the copyright to, please contact us at the links above and it will be credited or removed at your request.
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