Legendary Women of Las Vegas: Visionaries, Rebels & Trailblazers
The real story of downtown and Fremont Street can’t be told without the women who built it. They weren’t on the sidelines of Las Vegas history—they were out in front, setting the pace. From the first woman to hold the land before the railroad arrived, to the first gaming license issued in the city, women were shaping Las Vegas from the beginning.
While some of our Las Vegas history tours focus on Fremont Street, the Historic Red Light District, mobsters, casino kings, hauntings, and Rat Pack legends, this one goes even deeper. Ranchers, madams, business owners, casino operators, and philanthropists helped build early Las Vegas through land deals, brothels, gaming halls, and world-class resorts. Far from the background, these women were making the decisions that turned a dusty railroad town into an international destination.
This tour of legendary women of Las Vegas is perfect for anyone curious about the powerful women who helped shape the city.
Las Vegas is a City of Female “Firsts”
Las Vegas is a city of “firsts,” and many of its most important milestones belong to women. The first official gaming license in Las Vegas went to Mayme Stocker at the Northern Club on Fremont Street, a mother of three. The first Latina brothel owner to build a substantial estate on Block 16 was Pilar Santa Cruz, who ran the Red Front Saloon for decades. The city’s first Black showgirl on the Strip was Anna Bailey, and the first African American woman in Nevada to hold a gaming license was Sarann Knight‑Preddy. Even in the modern era, Elaine Wynn helped usher in a new generation of luxury resorts and large‑scale philanthropy. Taken together, these “firsts” show that women weren’t on the sidelines of Las Vegas history—they were out in front, setting the pace.
Helen J. Stewart: The First Lady of Las Vegas
Decades before the golden age of neon, Helen J. Stewart was running the Las Vegas Ranch on the site of today’s Old Mormon Fort, turning a struggling outpost into a thriving stop for travelers along the Old Spanish Trail. Widowed in the 1880s with five children to support, she became one of the area’s largest landowners and a crucial seller of land to the railroad—paving the way for downtown Las Vegas.
Stewart also served as Las Vegas’s first postmaster and was the first woman on the Clark County School Board, donating land for a grammar school that became one of the first public schools in the area to accept Native American children. Long before Las Vegas even had casinos, she set the pattern of women quietly holding the land, the records, and the community together.
Madams of Block 16: Las Vegas’s First Female Entrepreneurs
Madams were some of the most powerful women on early Fremont’s infamous Block 16, even if their names rarely made it into the history books. Running saloons, cribs, and full‑scale brothels, they hired staff, negotiated with lawmen and railroad bosses, paid fines that functioned like unofficial license fees, and quietly built small fortunes from the city’s vices. Women like Pilar Santa Cruz at the Red Front Saloon turned a few rough‑board rooms into long‑running businesses, supporting immigrant families, sex workers, and service workers when respectable jobs for women were scarce. In many ways, these madams were downtown’s first female entrepreneurs—controlling property, cash flow, and labor on the block while the official stories focused on the men who gambled and drank there.
Pilar Santa Cruz: The Red‑Light Pioneer of Block 16
At the center of the burgeoning downtown Las Vegas, in the 1910s, Pilar Santa Cruz, a recent immigrant from Mexico, opened the Red Front Saloon on Block 16, Las Vegas’s notorious red‑light district just north of today’s Fremont Street. By the 1920s, several women worked as prostitutes in her establishment, including other Mexican‑born women, making the Red Front a rare Latina‑owned brothel in the American West.
Santa Cruz owned and operated the Red Front for at least twenty years, later converting it into a rooming house when the city finally shut down Block 16 and pushed prostitution out in the 1940s. At her death in 1947 she was remembered as a “pioneer Las Vegas resident,” and the significant estate she left behind shows how profitable—and powerful—a woman brothel owner could be in early Las Vegas. Her story exposes the economic opportunities the red‑light district created for women, even as respectable society tried to erase that part of downtown’s past.
Mayme Stocker: The Woman with Las Vegas’s First Gaming License
In 1931, when Nevada re‑legalized gambling, the very first official gaming license in Las Vegas did not go to a mobster or a flashy casino tycoon—it went to a woman named Mayme Stocker. She owned the Northern Club at 15 East Fremont Street, a former “soft drink” joint that quietly offered drinks and gambling before legalization and later evolved through names like the Monte Carlo Club and La Bayou.
Stocker had followed her railroad‑worker husband to the desert and ended up as the legal face of downtown gaming, putting a woman’s name on the first license that helped turn Fremont Street into a gambling corridor. Her story flips the usual script: on the very street where today’s canopy and light show draw millions of visitors, the first official casino license belonged to a quiet businesswoman running a frontier club.
Gloria Dea: Vegas’ First Magician
Before today’s multi‑million‑dollar illusion shows, a young woman named Gloria Dea took the stage at the El Rancho in 1941 and became Las Vegas’s first magician. At just 19 years old, she performed in glittering costumes on a Strip that barely existed, astonishing audiences and earning raves from local reviewers who said she “completely mystified the audience.”
Dea’s act arrived when Las Vegas had only a couple of casinos, yet she embodied the blend of glamour, danger, and showmanship that would define the city for decades. Her story reminds visitors that women were innovating Vegas entertainment long before it became an international brand.
Sarann Knight‑Preddy: Breaking Barriers in West Las Vegas
In West Las Vegas—where segregation pushed Black residents and entertainers off the Strip—Sarann Knight‑Preddy built a career that changed both gaming and civil rights. In 1950 she became the first African American woman in Nevada to hold a gaming license, running small clubs at a time when women of color were rarely allowed to deal cards, let alone own businesses.
She later bought the historic Moulin Rouge Hotel, the city’s first integrated casino, and fought to keep its story alive. Knight‑Preddy spent decades working to revitalize West Las Vegas, earning major recognition and turning her into a key voice for preserving Black Las Vegas history. Today, her story reframes Las Vegas history from the perspective of a Black woman determined to claim a place at the table.
Judy Bayley: The First Lady of Gambling
Fast‑forward to the 1950s, when hotel–casino development was booming at the south end of the Strip. After her husband Warren died, Judy Bayley took over the Hacienda Hotel and Casino, becoming the first woman to own and operate a major Nevada resort. She earned the nickname “First Lady of Gambling” by proving that a woman could run a full‑scale Strip property in a male‑dominated industry.
Under her leadership, the Hacienda marketed to everyday visitors instead of only high rollers, launched an airline to fly guests directly to Las Vegas, and helped popularize keno on the Strip. She even commissioned the famous “horse and rider” neon sign that now welcomes visitors to downtown, linking her legacy directly to Fremont Street’s skyline.
Anna Bailey: Vegas’ Barrier‑Breaking Showgirl
Las Vegas is famous for its showgirls, but fewer people know the name Anna Bailey—the first Black showgirl on the Las Vegas Strip. In the 1950s and ’60s she performed in legendary rooms that still echo through Fremont Street and the Strip, while offstage confronting the reality that Black performers couldn’t always stay or gamble in the hotels where they worked.
Bailey’s performances at the Moulin Rouge and the Flamingo helped integrate Las Vegas entertainment and opened the door for future generations of Black performers. Her life story, told in later interviews, also turned her into an informal historian of segregation‑era Vegas, preserving memories that traditional history books often miss.
Elaine Wynn: A Visionary of Modern Las Vegas
If Steve Wynn is often credited with transforming Las Vegas through properties like the Golden Nugget, Mirage, Bellagio, and Wynn, Elaine Wynn was the visionary partner who helped shape that world and then carried the legacy forward in her own name. As co‑founder of Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts, she influenced resort design, guest experience, and the art‑driven luxury that became a modern Las Vegas hallmark.
Known in some profiles as the “Queen of Vegas,” Elaine Wynn later became just as famous for her philanthropy and education advocacy, leading the Nevada State Board of Education and creating the Elaine P. Wynn and Family Foundation. While Steve Wynn used Golden Nugget profits from Fremont Street to bankroll megaresorts on the Strip, Elaine Wynn helped ensure that this new era of glamour also funded schools, arts institutions, and community programs—showing how a woman at the center of casino power could reshape the city’s future far beyond the gaming floor.
More Women Who Shaped Nevada and Las Vegas
These legends are just a few of the women who changed Nevada and Las Vegas. There are many educators, activists, and business leaders throughout Nevada and though their names may not bring the same ring as the flamboyance of mobsters and business moguls, the city has been built and rebuilt by these passionate visionaries.
Why Women’s Stories Matter on Today’s Fremont Street
Exploring Fremont Street and downtown today, it’s hard to miss the casinos, bars, and entertainment. But knowing the stories of Mayme Stocker, Pilar Santa Cruz, Helen Stewart, Judy Bayley, Elaine Wynn, Sarann Knight‑Preddy, Anna Bailey, Gloria Dea, and many others changes the way one sees and experiences the surrounding streets, signs, and showrooms.
By spotlighting women visionaries, we get a more complete and more interesting Las Vegas: a city shaped by ranchers and showgirls, casino owners and civil‑rights activists, madams and magicians, philanthropists and red‑light pioneers. Their legacies shaped the Strip, downtown, and the old red‑light blocks near Fremont, and the neighborhoods of West Las Vegas.
If you’re searching for a Las Vegas women’s history walking tour or a deep dive into the women of Fremont Street, this is the story our featured Women's tour brings to life—on the very blocks where these legends once walked, worked, and changed the city forever.
For a limited time, experience this history where it actually happened.
Join us on a walking tour through the original streets of downtown Las Vegas, where the stories of madams, entrepreneurs, performers, and pioneers come to life. You’ll stand in the exact places these women lived, worked, and made the decisions that helped shape the city.
Book your Las Vegas Women's History Walking Tour here.
$35 Individual
small group max 10 people
Friday, Saturday and Sunday, March only
$285 Private groups welcome