Castaways hotel and casino
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- This article is about the casino on the Boulder Strip. For the casino on the Las Vegas Strip see Castaways (casino).
The Castaways hotel and casino was a hotel and casino located at the north end of the Boulder Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. The hotel consisted of a 19 story tower containing 445 rooms, an 80,000 square foot casino, and an adjacent RV park.
[edit] History
The property opened in 1954 as the Showboat Hotel & Casino, a locals casino with a riverboat theme. The hotel was successful until the 1990s when it suffered the same fate as the downtown casinos, which were losing business to the new megaresorts on the Las Vegas Strip. Many visitors also believed that this casino was located on the Strip since the exterior of Harrah's Las Vegas resembled a showboat.
The Casino complex also was home to the Showboat Sports Pavilion, famous worldwide during the mid to late 1980s as the home to ESPN broadcasts of American Wrestling Association (AWA) Wrestling and International Roller Derby matches. The Pavilion would later be converted to a bowling alley.
The Showboat was sold in March, 2000 and took on the Castaways name along with a south seas theme. The new owners never did well and according to the Associated Press, the facility was crippled by a downturn in tourism that occurred in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. They lost the hotel to the mortgage company when they could not make the required payments. The mortgage company finally sold the hotel at auction to Station Casinos.
Castaways closed for the last time in 2004.
Demolition began in July 2005. On January 11, 2006, the structure was fully demolished in a controlled implosion.
In order to comply with state gaming regulations to retain the gaming license for this location, a trailer with 16 slot machines was opened on the site for 8 hours on January 8, 2008.[1] The casino, licensed and operated by United Coin Machine Co. took a single #1 bet with a $2.50 payout.[2]
