What they wanted was Monte Carlo. They didn't want Las Vegas.
What they got was Las Vegas. We always knew that they would get Las Vegas
.
- Stuart Mendelson, Philadelphia Journal, 1978.
ATLANTIC CITY
, on Absecon Island just off the midpoint of the Jersey shoreline, has been a tourist magnet since 1854, when Philadelphia speculators created it as a rail terminal resort. In 1909, at the peak of the seaside town's popularity, Baedeker wrote "there is something colossal about its vulgarity" - a quality which it sustains today, even while beset by bankruptcy and decay. The real-life model for the board game
Monopoly
, it has an impressive history of popular culture, boasting the nation's first
Boardwalk
(1870), the world's first
Big Wheel
(1892), the first color
postcards
(1893) and the first
Miss America Beauty Pageant
(cunningly devised to extend the tourist season in 1921, and still held here yearly). During Prohibition and the Depression, Atlantic City was a center for rum-running, packed with speakeasies and illegal gambling dens. Thereafter, in the face of increasing competition from Florida, it slipped into a steep decline, until desperate city officials decided in 1976 to open up the decrepit resort to legal
gambling
.
The Town
Arriving by train, you'll be confronted by the monstrous
Convention Center
, which opened above the station in 1997, and houses a massive food court and standard mall shops, along with its meeting spaces and countless hotel rooms. Most of the...
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