Fantasy Along the Colorado

Let’s say you get in your car and just drive. You have your reasons. You head across the desert until the pavement ends and the road turns to dirt. And when you get to the end of the road and finally stop, you’re not sure why you came.

Because, after all, there’s nothing there. Just the end of a road and some shacks. Inside the shacks are people like you, who once made their drive to the desert. Only they never turned around and went home.

The desert is full of places like that. And not so long ago, Laughlin was one of them.

You could drive to Laughlin and find only the end of the road. There were some shacks and there was the Colorado River. You could sit by the river and let the wind blow sand in your face. That’s about all.

Laughlin was nowhere. And then this remarkable thing happened.

One day a man named Don Laughlin came to this spot. Let’s say he was making his own drive into the desert, and this was where he stopped.

He walked around a joint that used to be the only bar in town. The windows were boarded over. He stared at the river.

At that point, most of us would have turned around. But Laughlin decided that this place contained a secret. One day, he thought, this spot would rival Las Vegas. It would become the next great gambling city of the United States.

And he was right.

How did Laughlin know this? No one, even Laughlin, is sure. Perhaps he heard the same voice that told Brigham Young to build his city at Great Salt Lake.

Whatever, Laughlin bought the boarded-up bar and named the town after himself. Pretty soon, he added a few blackjack tables, a few slot machines. And that was the beginning.

The gambling center of Laughlin now rises dreamlike from the sand along the Colorado, just over the California line.

There is no true “city” here. Only the casinos. There is Harrah’s and the Ramada, the Hilton Flamingo and Laughlin’s original Riverside. One after another, they marched down the river’s shore, a wall of skyscrapers in the desert.

The centerpiece is a massive casino built in the shape of a riverboat paddle-wheeler. It is called the Colorado Belle, lights up at night like a Ferris wheel, and contains 1,238 rooms. When I came to Laughlin on a Monday evening, I tried to stay at the Colorado Belle. Nothing doing. It was full.

Laughlin has grown this fast: in 1990, its gambling revenues jumped 17% per quarter. A couple of years ago, it surpassed Lake Tahoe as the third-largest gambling center in Nevada, and now it is fast closing on Reno.

The occupancy rate of the town’s 4,000 hotel rooms runs at 90%. About 12,000 more rooms are on the way. Soon, jet service will arrive. There seems to be no end to the demand for gambling in Laughlin.

The mystery is why.

And the answers are uncertain. But the reasons for Laughlin’s success appear to have something to do with Southern California and a certain yearning for an earlier time. It has to do with a loathing of cities or, at least, cities as we have come to know them.

I connect the success of Laughlin to Southern California because Laughlin is a creature of our region. About 60% of its business comes from Southern California. Five years from now, when the 12,000 new hotel rooms will be ready and available, that percentage is expected to be even higher.

Which is to say, the future of Laughlin resides with us. And we seem to prefer gambling in a place that looks as unsullied as California itself must have looked half a century ago.

In Laughlin, there is no past. There are no reminders of our urban mistakes. You can wake up in Laughlin, look out your window, and see nothing but pure desert and the row of gambling monoliths. You can pull some slots and pretend, for a time, that cities don’t exist.

It’s a great fantasy, and people love it. They love the fact that, outside the casinos, there is not yet a coffee shop in Laughlin. They love the fact that one of the casinos flashes this message on its marquee: “Real Mashed Potatoes.”

Once, of course, you could feel this kind of newness in Orange County. And before that, in Van Nuys. We ruined those places, and soon we will also ruin Laughlin.

And it won’t take long. Already, the rudiments of a real town are taking shape and you can see the trouble coming. Condos are creeping over the hills. A golf course has opened.

So if you’re coming to Laughlin, come soon while the fantasy lasts. Get here before Don Rickles replaces mashed potatoes on the marquees. Get here before that first coffee shop opens.