Two Iconic Las Vegas Casinos Close In 2024, Recalling Mob, Megaresort Eras

This year marks the closing of two historically important resorts on the Las Vegas Strip — the Tropicana and Mirage.

The Tropicana, which first opened in April 1957, was one of the last properties on the resort corridor linked to the Mob era, still with original construction intact.

Since closing permanently last April, a gradual destruction of the Tropicana has taken place, but now the property is scheduled to be imploded Oct. 9. That space is being cleared to make way for a Major League Baseball stadium planned as the new home of the Oakland Athletics, beginning in 2028.

The Mirage closed in July and is being transformed into a Hard Rock hotel-casino, scheduled to begin operating in the spring of 2027.

When it first opened in 1989, with its fiery volcano in front of the property, the Mirage sparked a boom in megaresort construction that saw legendary older hotel-casinos imploded and replaced with modern properties. At the time of its opening, the 29-story Mirage, with 3,044 rooms, was the largest hotel in the world, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Old Las Vegas Vs. New Las Vegas

The Tropicana and Mirage now are part of the Las Vegas Strip’s ever-changing history.

Many people view those changes as inevitable in keeping Las Vegas competitive as legal gaming expands across the country. Every state except Hawaii, Utah, Georgia and South Carolina has commercial or tribal casinos, according to the American Gaming Association. Sports betting is legal in 38 states and Washington, D.C.

During an interview on Gambling.com’s “The Edge” last April, Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas, said Las Vegas casinos during the megaresort era “have to be in a constant state of evolution.” Most of the major resorts on the Strip are in the county outside Las Vegas city limits, but downtown Las Vegas and the Strip are commonly referred to as “Las Vegas.”

Schumacher added that the Tropicana during recent years was not in the best shape.

“Las Vegas has to be competitive on the Las Vegas Strip in particular,” he said.

Others acknowledge the changes but miss the old days.

Nicholas Pileggi, who cowrote the 1995 Las Vegas Mob movie “Casino” with director Martin Scorsese, told Gambling.com he likes old Las Vegas, when resorts were operated by people who ran illegal casinos elsewhere but moved to Nevada because gambling is legal. Many of those who moved to Las Vegas had ties to the Mob.

“I like the characters,” Pileggi said of those days. “I like the people who had lived an illegal life suddenly coming into the daylight and beginning to put together legitimate lives for themselves. Some of them did very, very well.”

Tropicana's Long Mob History

When the Tropicana first opened during the 1950s, it was a known as the “Tiffany of the Strip,” a 300-room jewel south of downtown on the desert highway to Los Angeles.

During its early years, the Tropicana was associated with some of the nation’s most notorious organized crime figures, including Frank Costello, Carlos Marcello, Johnny Rosselli, Carl Thomas, Joe Agosto and more.

Chicago oddsmaker Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal once lived at the hotel, according  Pileggi. Rosenthal’s wife, Geri, had been a dancer there. In the movie “Casino,” Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone portray characters based on the Rosenthals. The casino in the movie, the Tangiers, is based on the Stardust, which has since been demolished.

Meanwhile, film director Francis Ford Coppola and author Mario Puzo worked on the script for “The Godfather” while staying (and gambling) at the Tropicana, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Puzo, author of the novel “The Godfather,” once lost so much money at the Tropicana that the casino bosses there — described by Sands executive Ed Walters as “a rough (expletive deleted) crew” — advised the author not to leave town until he paid up.

The Tropicana also was the centerpiece of a federal investigation that exposed a 1970s skimming pipeline sending untaxed casino revenue from there to the Kansas City crime family run by Nick Civella.

With the Tropicana soon to be demolished, only a few resorts remain on Strip once linked to the Mob but with still with original construction intact. Those include Circus Circus, Slots-A-Fun and Caesars Palace. The Flamingo is at the same location on the Strip as it was when gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel first opened it in December 1946, though the last original building was demolished in 1993.

In downtown Las Vegas, some casinos once connected to the Mob, such as the Fremont and El Cortez, still are in operation with original construction in place.

Mirage Sparks Megaresort Boom

In 1989, when casino developer Steve Wynn opened the Mirage, it was the first new resort built on the Strip in 16 years. The gleaming resort, with its golden, Y-shaped design, helped reverse a slump in tourism, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The year after the Mirage first opened, tourism increased by 16%, “one of the largest year-over-year increases in the city's history as of 2024,” the newspaper reported.

During the years following the Mirage’s grand opening, several megaresorts were built. In some instances, legendary casinos once linked to the Mob, including the Desert Inn, Sands, Stardust, Dunes and Hacienda, were demolished to make room for megaresorts.

In the spring of 2027, the new owner of the Mirage property, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, plans to open a Hard Rock resort, including a guitar-shaped hotel, at the site where the Mirage and its volcano once stood.