Show TRAVEL GUTTERING LAS VEGAS: Family Fun in the Town That Never Shuts Down From duck to down Vegae The las vegas it the ctvinger’c town legend still exists of The big gamblers are still there but the city's image is changing: now it's "comeand bring the kids" old ladies cranking the arms 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 biggest gambling machine and it is gambling that has turned this dry once forbidding desert into a glittering oasis that drew 145 million visitors in 1967 It is gambling that makes it possible — even necessary — for each of a dosen 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 typieal Las Vegas hotel has an entertainment budget of 6100000 a week The r flashing 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 Foliea Bergires and the Paris Lido shows Ella Fitzgerald Red Skelton Phyllis Dil-lMilton Berle Roger Williams Eddie Fisher Connie Francis Kay Starr and dozens of other stsrs 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 Km old Los Vsgoi 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 sre visible no croupier wears a watch Breakfast is served 24 hours a day and bedrooms have sunproof shutters to keep out the blase of day But in 1959 Las Vegas opened its great flying saucer of s Convention Hall and a new kind of tourist began coming —the conventioneer sad hit family Hotels becoming aware that you cannot -f- ill 25000 tourist beds with just "high rollers" big-na- er M WBi 4 wslli3il Bat tha family it taking over the daytime action Kv By BEN MATTHEWS and little old ladies began to let sunshine leak in They built swimming pools tennis courts and layouts patchgolf courses — there are 10 ing the desert with green The newest slogan is "come—and bring the family" Several hotels have added nursery and babywatching services And one adventurous young couple just opened s facility that could be a pattern for resort complexes everywhere Sy and Lenetta Ogulnick both former schoolteachers have built a 5300000 Children’s Center only one mile from the Las Vegas Strip multipurpose They have a 9000 squaro-foo- t dining room auditorium and gymnasium a heated swimming pool tennis courts athletic fields and a woodland camping site There 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 610 overor night 520 5120 a week The Center has a faculty of teachers and advanced 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 The lake has highest in the Western hemisph and for waterhaven is a line shore a 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 18-ho- le room-and-boa- 500-mi- le rd day and 600000 fish were taken last year There are a dosen marinas on the lake and boats can be hired for ureter skiing fishing or formaexploring such fascinating desert-roc- k and Tomb tions as Iceberg Canyon Napoleon’s Swallow Cove Only on hour father away are Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon two glories of the American West with cliffs buttes and mesas as speo tacularly 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 5150 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 Visualise 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 one-arm- ed $40 Worth of Discount Coupons Family Weekly reader cubing to eave money and eee more on their voeathno may vend for Utuetrnted “Dollar-tee Guidon" each containing tSi or mors payee and Diecount Coupon e worth up to tiO on various attractions Gulden available are B—Waekingten DC C—New England D—Tex as E—Chicago F—Now York H—Arin ana 1—Mexico Mail only $1 pine 154 chipping for each one you want to FW Books Dept Ti Bex TOT Grand Central Station New York NY 10017 W Family Weekly June IS 1M5 - 1 |