It wasn’t the first hotel built in Las Vegas, as some have claimed, but the Golden Gate is a hotel full of firsts.
When John F. Miller opened the 10-room hotel on the corner of Main and Fremont streets in 1906, then called the Hotel Nevada, telephones were still a bit of a rarity. But when telephone lines were installed in Las Vegas it was Miller’s hotel that got the first telephone, and with it the first phone number in town – “Ring 1.”
It opened as the first casino in Las Vegas. In 1959, it became the first to serve the 50-cent shrimp cocktail, a dish that would become a staple and in some ways a symbol of Las Vegas.