The Other Strip

With her long, platinum hair and hot pink satin jacket, Yvonne Manriquez serves as a striking landmark to disoriented visitors in Boulder Station.

She's there daily and, though she insists she's lucky anywhere, you'll find her in the same spot, playing her favorite video poker machine in the southeast section of the casino. If it's not available when she arrives at her usual time, around 3 p.m., she leaves.

"This is like my living room," the former Miss Wheelchair Nevada 2004 says, gesturing to her special machine and the aisle where it's located.

She lives just down the street. She's loyal to her favorite casino, preferring a no-frills kind of place, where she has easy access to the parking lot, the buffet and (occasionally) the bingo hall. Most importantly, though, is Manriquez's video poker machine. On this recent Tuesday night, she's up $300 and before dinner, too.

Though it is said tongue-in-cheek, Boulder Station is Manriquez's home away from home, making her a prime example not only of the casino's typical customer but of the Boulder Strip, too.

"Our customers are our neighbors," Mark Majetich, general manager of Arizona Charlie's Boulder, says of his property's demographic. "They live within a three- to five-mile radius. They're blue collar people, semiretired and retired people."

Back in the early days of Las Vegas, it was thought that Boulder Highway would be similar to the Las Vegas Strip, offering a variety of hotel-casinos and catching gamblers who came in from Arizona, says Michael Green, local historian and history professor at the College of Southern Nevada. The Showboat opened in 1954; Sam's Town came along in 1979, followed by Boulder Station in 1994 and a smattering of tiny casinos, some of which still blaze their neon signs into the Vegas desert nights.

But those Arizona customers never materialized in the way that California visitors did and the Boulder Strip became what it is today: A long highway that cuts a swath through the valley's landscape but still has the feel of the wide open desert, despite the businesses and few casinos that are there.

New Hamsphire natives Paul McKenna, 63, and his wife, Susan, who says she's old enough to know better but younger than her husband, have been visiting Las Vegas for 30 years. Since 2004, they've been part-time residents, living six months a year here.

It was back in the 1970s that the couple, a vacationing submarine pipe fitter and a secretary, discovered the Showboat and fell in love with the place, even after it became the Castaways, Paul McKenna says. When the hotel closed in 2004, they drifted among Boulder Station, Sam's Town, the Joker's Wild and Skyline until finding a new favorite casino, Arizona Charlie's, when it opened in 2000.

"When they took down Showboat I thought that was it," Paul McKenna says between hands of video poker at Arizona Charlie's bar on a recent Tuesday evening. "The Boulder Strip is very different than it used to be. There was a big dip, it looked like it was dying off. Now it's on an upswing."

It's not so much that the area went into a downward spiral, Green says. Rather, it never really had an upward spiral.

"The growth in the valley was not in that direction," Green explains, adding that neighborhood casinos, the western expansion of the valley and the success of Laughlin all cut into the Boulder Strip's potential development.

Nellis Air Force Base feeds customers to the Boulder Strip area, but its presence also keeps development from spreading east. All of the area's casino representatives say the military accounts for a good proportion of their guests.

Like downtown, the Boulder Strip has experienced some homelessness, though casino operators say it hasn't affected them.

"We are talking about older parts of Las Vegas. Certainly you might see some of the same issues," Green says. "They don't have Summerlin to feed off of or the newer parts of Green Valley. It's a different demographic, they are generally struggling for fewer dollars."

Justene Thomas, director of hotel operations for Arizona Charlie's, has been on property for 15 years, back when it was a Sunrise Suites. She has witnessed dramatic changes along the Boulder Strip.

"I also grew up in this area. Showboat was always a place we'd go bowling before they built Sam's Town," Thomas says. "It's a different feeling from what the Strip is. There's so much variety in a short corridor here."

The McKennas visit other casinos on Boulder Highway but they always end up back at Arizona Charlie's, they say. The casino even played a part in their decision to buy a mobile home off of Desert Inn Road, a few minutes away.

Every day, Paul arrives at the casino between 7 and 9 a.m., he says. He spends a few hours in the sports book and it's home for lunch around noon. After a short snooze, he and Susan head to Arizona Charlie's for some late afternoon video poker and dinner. Though they both love Yukon Grill, the couple will eat in the snack bar tonight.

"We like the chicken fingers," Paul says.

Food is important to them but the gaming takes priority, they say.

"We're players," says Paul, big enough players that they can ask the casino host for a comp and get $200 with no questions asked.

That seems to be the case for the Boulder Strip demographic in general, says David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

While nongaming revenue -- food, entertainment, shopping -- accounts for about 60 percent of the Strip's revenue, it makes up 22 percent of the Boulder Strip revenue, Schwartz says.

As for why, Schwartz says: "Maybe it's the old theory of keeping buffet prices low as a loss leader. They've really gone in two different directions."

Green thinks it means that Boulder Strip customers want to gamble. And that's one thing that hasn't changed for the area.

By 8 p.m. the sun has set and the traffic around Sam's Town seems to increase. Inside, however, visitors are transported back to pioneer days through the Sunset Stampede at Mystic Falls, an attraction that marketing director Patrick Fitzgerald calls one of the city's best-kept secrets.

A wolf howls before appearing at the top of the mountain; luckily it's animatronic, as are the bear, cougar and other "wildlife." Visitors watch as the water fountains dance to music. A live atrium, Mystic Falls seeks to give visitors a respite from the ordinary, Fitzgerald says. It opened in 2000, part of an expansion that added an 18-screen movie theater.

The hotel opened with a country-Western theme; it has gone through a few metamorphoses but still maintains that NASCAR, Nellis Air Force Base and rodeo crowd, says vice president and general manager Mike Garms.

After the Sunset Stampede, a short line forms in front of Willy & Jose's Cantina, a sign that it's dinnertime on this recent Tuesday. It's also a sign that, despite the changes, Sam's Town hasn't changed all that much, at least in spirit. The cantina opened in 1981 and remains popular today.

"It's amazing how the folks in the area have remained consistent and grown up with the area," Garms says.

Contact reporter Sonya Padgett at spadgett@reviewjournal.com or (702) 380-4564.