The Historic Dunes Hotel

During my most recent trip to Las Vegas, I came upon a display of the area’s history when I visited the Clark County Heritage Museum in Henderson that recounted some of the resort city's most famous landmarks. One of them was The Dunes Hotel & Casino.

The first Las Vegas Strip hotel I ever stayed in was The Dunes, back in the late ‘60s when my in-laws took us (the wife, the little kid) to Las Vegas one Christmas holiday. Up to then, I’d only stayed in (1) a downtown motel, and (2) The Fremont Hotel on Fremont Street before it became The Fremont Experience.

There are two things that stick in my mind from The Dunes experience: First, we hired a babysitter to watch our young son while we went to a show. Her name was Mrs. Yertle. I’ll never forget it, because it rhymes with … ah, never mind. Mrs. Yertle spent the evening in our room with our son and I guess she did just fine because the boy wasn’t screaming his head off when we got back.

My son told us that the first thing Mrs. Yertle did was eat some leftover untouched food that was on our room service cart.
 

Second, the show we went to was a typical Las Vegas stage production with bare-breasted dancers (the hotel was the first to feature this), variety acts, and Reveen the Impossible. Peter Reveen did magic and hypnotism; he was a big star at the time, performing for 35 years or so to an estimated six million people. He’s currently illusionist Lance Burton’s manager.

I stayed at the Dunes a couple more times, then alas, they imploded the place in 1993, the first-ever implosion in Las Vegas. The Bellagio now occupies the land where The Dunes once sat.