VEGAS MYTHS RE-BUSTED: The Strip’s Naked City Was Named for Sunbathing Showgirls
EDITOR’S NOTE: A new “Vegas Myths Busted” publishes every Monday, with a bonus Flashback Friday edition. Today’s edition originally ran on Jan. 15, 2024.
In the 1960s, back when Las Vegas’ Meadows Addition neighborhood was nice, showgirls lived there. They liked to sunbathe au naturel at their apartment pools because they didn’t like tan lines.
That’s the commonly told story of how the Naked City, a community of low-rent apartment buildings and houses in the shadow of the Stratosphere just north of the Las Vegas Strip, got its nickname.
And it’s hooey.
Not a single newspaper reference to Naked City appears in a Las Vegas newspaper before a June 20, 1982, Las Vegas Review-Journal cover story headlined: “’Naked City’ a Las Vegas Battleground.”
In that story, Lt. John Conner reported investigating 10 killings in the neighborhood in 16 months. “Most of them appear to be drug-related,” the homicide chief said.
Myth Understanding
The Meadows Addition — “Las Vegas” is Spanish for “the meadows” — was created in the late 1940s as a grid of 16 streets named after other cities, including New York, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Philadelphia. Before the Sahara opened in 1952, Sahara Avenue was wholly contained in this community, where it was known as San Francisco Street.
When its first apartment buildings opened in 1953, the Meadows Addition became a popular home for Strip employees, including showgirls, who found the low rents and short commutes ideal.
