End of an Era at Stateline

Claire Fortier
OPINION Friday, April 27, 2001

It's hard to believe it's over. In many ways, the South Shore has been shaped by the five-decade competition between Harrah's Lake Tahoe and Harveys Resort & Casino. When the casino on one side of Highway 50 offered new, bigger and brighter, the competitor on the other side of the street came back with newest, biggest and brightest.

The rivalry dated back 57 year. That's when Harvey Gross offered some slot machines and blackjack games at his small lunch counter and gas station, only to be one-upped by Bill Harrah's bingo parlor across the street a few years later.

Long before Caesars established its Mountain Empire and Del Webb created his High Sierra, now the Horizon Casino Resort, Gross and Harrah developed their own special styles of Nevada casinos, each acutely aware of the other's every move. That rivalry was instrumental in creating gaming as the biggest economic engine at Lake Tahoe.

Read this entire article in The Tahoe Daily Tribune.