Las Vegas pool parties: 10 key moments in their evolution | Attractions

With its potent mix of celebrities, sun and skin, Rehab changed the fortunes of Las Vegas hotels by moving some of the biggest parties out of the darkness of nightclubs and into swimming pools in broad daylight.

It would be easy, then, to think the city’s pool party culture began with Rehab’s debut at the Hard Rock Hotel in 2004.

You’d only be off by 95 years.

People have been looking to party in the water in Las Vegas almost as long as there’s been a Las Vegas. Here’s a look at 10 key moments in the evolution of the city’s pool parties.

Vegas Park Resort

Four years after the city’s founding, Vegas Park Resort was up and running in 1909 with a “plunge,” as some of the early pools were known. Located just north of the current site of Cashman Field, the plunge used water diverted from the nearby Las Vegas Creek and provided bathing suits to its guests. Dances took place every Wednesday and Saturday with the Fastido Orchestra brought in from Salt Lake City.

Ladd’s Resort

Las Vegas pioneer James Ladd, an early hotelier and major landowner, opened Ladd’s Resort in 1911. The property featured dancing and a swimming pool that was fed by an artesian well. Designed as a retreat from town, Ladd’s Resort was so far out, it provided transportation via horse-drawn wagon. The property started at what’s now 11th and Fremont streets. At the time, though, Las Vegas ended at Fifth and Fremont.

Lorenzi Park

David Gerald Lorenzi, a minor aristocrat born in France, arrived in Las Vegas in 1911. He purchased 80 acres intended as a vineyard, but the early settlers here didn’t take to wine. In 1926, Lorenzi opened a resort on that land with a concert shell, a dance pavilion and a 100-by-110-foot swimming pool fed by fresh spring water. Lorenzi Park also may have had the first VIP section at a local pool party. A 1980 feature in the Review-Journal described the Island Club, a shack where the city’s most successful men gathered: “A wooden footbridge linked the island to the mainland. An iron gate at the end of the bridge could be unlocked only by club members. Spikes on top of the gate and surrounding fence prevented meddlers from climbing inside.”

Mermaid Pool

The city’s cement pool opened in 1926 at Fifth and Fremont streets. By 1931, it was piping in music from a radio and a phonograph via a special amplifier. The Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal noted that the Mermaid Pool was open daily from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and that the facility served “dinners, chili, sandwiches, ice cream and pop right at the pool.” Advertisements from the era blared, “Water changed three times a week!”

El Rancho Vegas

Hotel pool parties wouldn’t be possible without one thing: hotel pools. The tightly bunched hotels on Fremont Street didn’t leave much room for swimming, but land was more plentiful along the stretch of U.S. Highway 91 that would become known as the Strip. El Rancho Vegas, the first resort on that highway at what is now Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, opened in 1941 with a pool in front to tempt drivers into stopping and staying there. As Review-Journal editor John F. Cahlan wrote in 1952, “When Thomas Hull constructed his ‘glorified tourist court’ on the Los Angeles highway around the inviting tub of water out on the front lawn, he set the pace, and every hotel in that area which has been completed since has had a swimming pool as a necessary adjunct.”

Sands

In the summer of 1953, Al Freeman, publicity director at the just-opened Sands, collaborated with Las Vegas News Bureau photographer Don English for one of the city’s most iconic photos. Freeman had a craps table placed in the shallow end of the Sands’ pool and stocked it with swimsuit-clad gamblers. English’s photo was sent out on wire services, appeared in newspapers around the world and helped create the appearance that pretty much anything could happen in Las Vegas and its pools.

Flamingo

Elvis Presley portrayed a race car driver and Ann-Margret played the Flamingo’s swim instructor in “Viva Las Vegas.” The 1964 movie musical showcased the sprawling Flamingo pool in all its glory, including the waiters in formal wear delivering cocktails. It also gave moviegoers the impression that the Flamingo had swim instructors who looked like Ann-Margret.

Mandalay Bay

The topless Moorea Beach pool opened quietly in August 2003 and quickly captured the public’s imagination. It wasn’t long before the city was inundated with titillating billboards promoting similar pools — referring to the practice as “European-style” or “toptional” sunbathing” — up and down the Strip.

Hard Rock Hotel

Before Rehab turned the Hard Rock’s pool into the place to see and be seen on summer Sundays, hotel pools largely were reserved for hotel guests — and those locals crafty enough to sneak into them. Then Rehab came along, smacking tourists and locals alike with a hefty cover charge on its way to grossing $1.5 million in its first summer. The debauchery was broadcast to the rest of the country via the truTV reality series “Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Hotel.” Soon, the town was overflowing with pool parties.

Rio

Things finally went too far with Sapphire Pool, the Rio’s topless party pool launched in May 2008 as a joint venture with Sapphire gentleman’s club. In April 2009, the pool’s general manager promised RJ readers that, on any given day, 30 to 100 exotic dancers would be topless and “getting the party going.” Less than three months later, the experiment ended after a series of arrests.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.