Top 10 Las Vegas Casino Demolitions

When: Hotel closed midnight, July 15, 2007. Imploded Nov. 13, 2007.
Replaced by: Multi-billion-dollar Plaza-branded resort, opening date not yet announced

With thundering crash, the New Frontier came down on Nov. 13, 2007, closing the door on the second oldest hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

While the New Frontier never had the romantic Rat Pack era associations that other imploded hotels (Sands, Dunes) had, it did have its share of historic Vegas moments. This was the hotel that Elvis Presley made his Vegas debut at in 1956. (Presley received a cool reception and was panned by Vegas entertainment critics.) The New Frontier was also the starting place for Vegas headliners, Siegfried & Roy. The hotel was, until its implosion, the last operating hotel that was once owned by Howard Hughes and was also the site of one of the longest-running labor strikes in U.S. history (six years and four months).

Plans for The New Frontier land are currently on hold.

Read more about the New Frontier's implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.

When:Hotel closed Oct. 31, 2006. Imploded March 13, 2007.
Replaced by: Echelon Place, currently on hold

With its explosive implosion on March 13, 2007, the final chapter of the iconic Stardust resort was written.

Boyd Gaming closed the doors on the 48-year-old casino and hotel Nov. 1, 2006 in anticipation of the implosion that cleared the way for Echelon Place, Boyd's planned complex of resort hotels and convention facilities.

The implosion of the Stardust was one of the more emotional for locals and long-time visitors alike. Its colorful past, most notably its mob ties, was a major source for the movie 'Casino.' Though there have been a number of significant implosions over the last decade, the Stardust's erasure was the largest since the Sands disappeared into a cloud of dust in 1996.

Read more about the Stardust's implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.

The aging and inefficient Boardwalk provided more entertainment value in its explosion than perhaps at any point during its operation. At least its clearing was not in vain. Its footprint is a key part of MGM Mirage's $7 billion CityCenter project, a mixed-use resort and entertainment complex combining gaming, shopping, state-of-the-art architecture, upscale hotels and hi-rise condominiums.

Read more about the Boardwalk's implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.

In 1985 a Canadian based company would become the first foreign company to obtain a license to operate a casino in Nevada as they reopened the property with the New Orleans theme of Bourbon Street.

In March 2005, Harrah's purchased the property and several surrounding properties to acquire an 8 acre land parcel just off the strip and adjacent to the Las Vegas Monorail. The casino was closed in October of 2005 with demolition work beginning on the property the following January.

Harrah's Entertainment bought the property in 1998 and opened other Showboat properties in Atlantic City, New Orleans, Illinois and Australia. Harrah's only ran the casino for two years before selling it to a group of investors. It was after this sale that the Showboat was renamed the Castaways and rebranded in a tropical island feel. Three years later the property was in bankruptcy, finally closing in January 2004.

Station Casinos bought the site late in 2004.

Opening as Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn in 1950, the D.I. was the fifth resort to appear on what would become the Las Vegas Strip. The popular resort - which featured an 18-hole golf course and a showroom that hosted the biggest names in entertainment, including Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Tina Turner and more - was purchased by billionaire Howard Hughes in 1967 after the hotel's management unsuccessfully tried to eject him from their penthouse suites.

It changed owners throughout the next 30 years, but in 1997, the D.I. underwent major renovations, giving it a completely fresh, upscale appearance more in line with the cosmopolitan direction of newer mega-resorts. Nonetheless, Wynn had a vision and that vision required the leveling of the resort's Augusta Tower in 2001. The remaining smaller towers of the D.I. were used as offices for Wynn Resorts and housed Wynn's art collection before finally being imploded with little fanfare on an early autumn morning in 2004.

Wynn Las Vegas, a $2.7 billion mega-resort centered around a gleaming, amber, 60-story tower, opened on April 28, 2005. The footprint of the towers from the second implosion yielded Encore, an adjacent resort, which opened in late 2008.

Read more about the Desert Inn's implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.

The property enjoyed a successful re-opening, but never really caught on. After 10 years of financial struggles, Torres shut down the El Rancho, and it sat empty, like a towering ghost town, for eight years before its 13-story tower was imploded by new owners Turnberry Associates, who wanted to ensure a clear view for owners of their adjacent hi-rise condominium project, Turnberry Place.

Read more about the El Rancho's implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.

Itself a reinvention of a property formerly known as King's Resort (and before that, the Tally-Ho), the Aladdin opened in 1966, eventually encompassing 36 acres, with a 17-story tower, 1,100 rooms and a checkered past full of financial troubles, legal problems and mob involvement. Not even Wayne Newton's early-1980s co-ownership could fully save this seemingly-cursed resort.

The only part of the resort to remain standing after the implosion was the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts, which became a centerpiece of the new Aladdin that opened in August 2000, a $1.4 billion, '1001 Arabian Nights'-themed resort featuring 2,600 rooms, Desert Passage, a 500,000-square-foot shopping center, a 100,000-square-foot casino, 21 restaurants and 75,000 square feet of meeting rooms.

The hotel eventually went on to become Planet Hollywood, sans implosion.

Read more about the Aladdin's implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.

The Hacienda started as a 256-room motor lodge on the outskirts of town and grew to a 1,200-room resort. It was among the first properties to offer family-friendly recreation, including a miniature golf course and a go-kart track. In its later years, the resort succumbed to age and a loss in traffic to the new, gleaming mega-resorts popping up further north on the Strip.

Read more about the Hacienda's implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.

Sadly, those glory days of the circular Sands hotel-casino were 30 years past when owner Sheldon Adelson imploded the 44-year-old resort in 1996 to clear space for the Venetian resort, the $1.8 billion hotel-casino which - with its reproduction of Venice's canals and streets - now occupies most of the former Sands' property. An adjacent Adelson property, The Palazzo, opened in 2007.

The Sands lives on, however, both visually in the original 'Ocean's Eleven' film and on musical albums recorded live at the hotel by the likes of Sinatra, Davis, Jr. and others.

Read more about the Sands' implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.

Before being cleared away to accommodate 2,000 new parking spaces for the neighboring Las Vegas Convention Center, the Landmark - with its unique, flying saucer-shaped tower - lived up to its name. The futuristic-themed hotel, which opened Fourth of July weekend in 1969 with Danny Thomas playing the showroom, was built by Frank Carroll but purchased by eccentric developer Howard Hughes in 1968. In its heyday, the Landmark played host to other celebrities such as Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.

The hotel starred in a few other movies prior to its implosion, most notably 'Diamonds Are Forever' and 'Casino.'

Read more about the Landmark's implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.

The implosion of the Dunes demarcated the end of an era as much as the opening of its replacement, the $1.6 billion Bellagio resort, at its time the world's costliest hotel. Bellagio opened with more than 3,000 rooms on an 11-acre site, featuring a 22-million-gallon lake, the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art and a spectacular Cirque du Soleil production show, 'O.'

Read more about the Dune's implosion in the Las Vegas Sun.