Picture the second resort ever to open on the Las Vegas Strip, its Western cowboy aesthetic long gone from this spot. R.E. Griffith, a Texas theater chain owner, built it in 1942 on the model Hull had established at El Rancho Vegas — a Western-themed destination resort outside city limits. The Last Frontier went further than its predecessor in embracing the cowboy aesthetic, decorating its interior with genuine frontier antiques and staging its entertainment around Western mythology.
This site has hosted some remarkable moments in American entertainment history. Ronald Reagan performed here in the 1950s before his political career began. Liberace played his first Las Vegas residency here, establishing the relationship between the flamboyant pianist and the city that would last for decades. The hotel was renamed The New Frontier in 1955 as Las Vegas moved away from its cowboy-town identity and toward something more sophisticated and cosmopolitan.
The New Frontier was where Elvis Presley made his Las Vegas debut in April 1956, performing two weeks of shows to audiences that were largely indifferent — critics called him unsuitable for the Las Vegas market. He returned 13 years later to the International Hotel in 1969 and never left again. The New Frontier was imploded in 2007. A condominium project was planned for the site but never built. The Strip has its own ruins — they just tend to be invisible.