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Show TRAVEL GLITTERING LAS VEGAS: A tf i f' f mm IftL - ijS f , ran fix JclL- -- III ,TTi From dusk to dutvn, Vegas is the swinger's town. THE legend still exists of old ladies cranking the arms LAS VEGAS of slot machines, of "high rollers" at the dice tables and roulette wheels, of millions of lights and miles of beckoning neon signs. For Las Vegas is first and foremost the world's jiggest gambling machine, and it is gambling that has turned this dry, once forbidding desert into a glittering oasis that drew 14.5 million visitors in 1967. It is gambling that makes it possible even necessary for each of a dozen superbaroque hotels to offer the world's greatest bargains in entertainment. To keep the guest rooms filled and the guests close to the action, a typical Las Vegas hotel has an entertainment budget of $100,000 a week. The clashing signs that proclaim the superstar in attendance cost up to $1 million. At the same time this summer you will find Broadway's "Fiddler on the Roof," the Folies Bergeres and the Paris Lido Red Skelton, Phyllis Dil-le- r, shows, Ella Fitzge-a'- d, Milton Berle, Roger Williams, Eddie Fisher, Connie Francis, Kay Starr, and dozens of other stars playing the Strip. The most it would cost you to see the show is a $6 or $8 dinner about a third of the price of such an evening in New York, Miami, or San Francisco. Th old Las Vegas attitude used to be: never let the guest outside. Once inside one of its lush ' palaces, time stopped. The great casino lobbies were cunningly constructed so that no sunlight seeped in. Even now no clocks are visible; no croupier wears a watch. Breakfast is served 24 hours a day, and bedrooms have sunproof shutters to keep out the blaze of day. But in 1959 Las Vegas opened its great flying saucer of a Convention Hall and a new kind of tourist began coming the conventioneer and his family. Hotels, becoming aware that you cannot fill 25,000 tourist beds with just "high rollers" big-na- 30 Family Weekly, June S3, 1968 Family Fun in the Town That Never Shuts Down The big gamblers are still there, but the city's image is changing: now it's "come and bring the kids" But the family is taking over the daytime action. day, and 600,000 fish were taken last year. There are a dozen marinas on the lake, and boats can be hired for water skiing, fishing, or formaexploring such fascinating desert-roc- k tions as Iceberg Canyon, Napoleon's Tomb, and By BEN MATTHEWS Swallow Cove. and little old ladies, began to let sunshine leak in. They built swimming pools, tennis courts, and golf courses there are 10 layouts patching the desert with green. The newest Blogan is "come and bring the family." Several hotels have added nursery and services. And one adventurous young couple just opened a facility that could be a pattern for resort complexes everywhere. Sy and Lenette Ogulnick, both former schoolteachers, have built a $300,000 Children's Center only one mile from the Las Vegas Strip. multipurpose They have a 9,000 square-fodining room, auditorium and gymnasium, a heated swimming pool, tennis courts, athletic fields, and a woodland camping site. Thero ore dormitories for boys and girls age range from 6 to 16. The Ogulnicks will pick up children at any Las Vegas hotel and keep them for the day from 8:30 to 5:30 or on a full basis. Day camping costs $10, over18-ho- le baby-watchi- ng ot room-and-boa- night $20 or $120 a week. The Center has a faculty of teachers and rd ad- vanced students from Southern Nevada University who are ready to tutor children in subjects that may have given them trouble during the school year or to teach them guitar, tennis, skiing, riding anything the child wants. For families who want to play together, Las Vegas is a hub for excursions to Lake Mead, formed by the towering arc of Hoover Dam, the highest in the Western hemisphere. The lake has shore line and is a haven for watera fowl. Rocky Mountain sheep, deer, and coyote can be spotted from the shore. There is no closed fishing season in fact, fishing is legal night and 500-mi- le Only an hour farther away are Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon, two glories of the American West, with cliffs, buttes, and mesas as spectacularly colored as the Grand Canyon. If conventions and the family have wrought one significant change in this desert city, a more dramatic change could be in the offing. Howard Hughes, America's mysterious billionaire, seems to be buying up Nevada. Quietly, from his headquarters in the Desert Inn, he has purchased 14 facilpercent of Las Vegas' ities for upwards of $150 million. He also has bought the nearby Krupp ranch, Thunderbird Field, tv station KLAS, the Taylor ranch, Alamo Airways, and untold stretches of prime land along the Strip. He plans to build a monorail to serve his empire on the Strip and Hughesland may soon make Disneyland look like a county fair by comparison. Visualize then, if you can, Las Vegas 1975 with its monorail down the glittering Strip, the desert converted to green with new irrigation projects, families on vacation and, of course, tireless little old ladies with paper cups full of coins in their left hand and a strong right hand on a bandit. ng one-arm- ed $40 Worth of Discount Coupons Family Weekly readers wishing to save money and see more on their vacations may send for illustrated "Dollar-Wis- e Guides," each containing 254 or more pages and Discount Coupons worth up to $i0 on various attractions. Guides available are D.C., ew England, sw York, Mail only $1 plus 154 shipping for each one you want to F.W. Books, Dept. 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