Golden Nugget Lake Tahoe Hotel & Casino (formerly Sahara Tahoe, High Sierra, Horizon Lake Tahoe, and Hard Rock Lake Tahoe) is a

casino hotel A casino hotel is an establishment consisting of a casino with temporary lodging provided in an on-premises hotel. Customers receive the benefits of both gambling facilities and lodging. Since the casino and hotel are located on the same premis ...

Stateline, Nevada Stateline is a census-designated place (CDP) on the southeastern shore of Lake Tahoe in Douglas County, Nevada, Douglas County, Nevada, United States. It lies next to the border with California and is conurbated with South Lake Tahoe, California ...

. It is one of four major casino hotels in Stateline. Horizon Lake Tahoe closed on April 1, 2014, to begin a $60 million renovation and rebranding as Hard Rock Lake Tahoe, which held its grand opening on January 28, 2015. It has 539 hotel rooms and of gaming space, with 431

slot machines A slot machine, fruit machine (British English), poker machine or pokie (Australian English and New Zealand English) is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers. A slot machine's standard layout features a screen disp ...

, 33 table games and a new Golden Nugget Sportsbook.

History

Sahara Tahoe (1965–1983)

Plans for the casino hotel were announced in January 1963 by the Del E. Webb Corporation, a real estate development firm that also owned casinos in Las Vegas, including the

Sahara The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

. Webb leased of land for the development from the Park Cattle Co., a ranching company with large land holdings in the area. Construction began in April 1964. The property opened as the Sahara–Tahoe on June 30, 1965. Developed at a cost of $25 million, the Sahara had a 14-story hotel with 350 rooms, and a 1,000-seat theater restaurant. The Sahara expanded with a second hotel tower completed in late 1968, with 224 rooms on 8 floors.

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the ...

performed at the Sahara Tahoe from 1971 to 1976, and his suite is still available for guests to book.

High Sierra (1983–1990)

In 1983, the Sahara was given a Western theme and rebranded as the High Sierra Hotel/Casino. In 1985, it hosted the companies who defined the

High Sierra Format ISO 9660 (also known as ECMA-119) is a file system for optical disc media. The file system is an international standard available from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Since the specification is publicly available, im ...

, the basis for how computers access

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

s today.

Horizon Lake Tahoe (1990–2014)

In 1990, the High Sierra was sold to

Columbia Sussex Columbia Sussex is a privately owned hotel company based in Crestview Hills, Kentucky. The company, owned by the Yung family, owns and operates hotels in various parts of the United States. The current president and founder is William J. Yung III ...

, which re-branded it again as Horizon. In 2005, Park Cattle Co. moved to

evict Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosed by a mortgagee (often, the prior owners who defaulted on a mortga ...

Columbia Sussex from the premises, alleging that they had allowed the Horizon to fall into disrepair. The ensuing lawsuit lasted until 2008, when

Tropicana Entertainment Tropicana Entertainment Inc. was a publicly traded Gambling, gaming company that owned and operated casinos and resorts in Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Missouri, New Jersey. and Aruba. Tropicana properties collectively had approximatel ...

(successor of Columbia Sussex's casino business) agreed to pay $165 million to Park Cattle and end the lease for the Horizon as early as 2011. In 2009, Tropicana Entertainment transferred the lease and the operating business of the Horizon back to an affiliate of Columbia Sussex. Tropicana was undergoing a bankruptcy reorganization and hoped to focus its efforts on its neighboring

MontBleu Casino Bally's Lake Tahoe (formerly Park Tahoe, Caesars Tahoe, and MontBleu Resort Casino) is a casino hotel in Stateline, Nevada. It is owned by Edgewood Companies and operated by Bally's Corporation. The property includes a casino and a 438-room hote ...

. In 2014, NevaOne LLC, a Park Cattle affiliate, acquired the Horizon's operations. NevaOne closed the Horizon for renovations on April 1, 2014, with plans to rebrand it as the Park Tahoe Casino Resort. Warner Gaming, which operated several casinos, including the

Hard Rock Las Vegas The Mirage is a defunct casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States. The 65-acre property included a casino and 3,044 rooms. Golden Nugget, Inc., led by developer Steve Wynn, purchased the future land of the Mirage ...

, was retained to manage the property.

Hard Rock Hotel and Casino (2014–2023)

In July 2014, the Park family announced that the Horizon would be rebranded as the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Lake Tahoe, instead of the Park Tahoe. The name was used under license from Brookfield Financial, which owned the rights to the

Hard Rock Hard rock or heavy rock is a heavier subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and Distortion (music), distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the Garage rock, garage, Psychedelic rock, psychedelic and blues ...

brand in the Western United States. The property reopened as the Hard Rock on January 28, 2015, after $60 million of renovations.

Paragon Gaming Paragon Gaming is a gaming company based in Enterprise, Nevada that owns and manages casinos in the United States and formerly in Canada. History Paragon Gaming was founded in 2000 by cousins Diana Bennett and Scott Menke, who were experienced gam ...

acquired a majority stake in the property in 2016. In 2023, Fertitta Entertainment bought the property from Paragon, and announced that it would be rebranded as a Golden Nugget casino.

Gallery

Sahara Tahoe postcard.png, The Sahara–Tahoe, shortly after opening (circa 1965) Sahara Tahoe logo cropped.png, Sahara Tahoe logo (1965–1983) Horizon Lake Tahoe old logo 2.jpg, Horizon Lake Tahoe logo (1990–2014) Horizonhotel.jpg, The hotel towers, as the Horizon (2006) Hard Rock Casino, Stateline NV 74 - panoramio.jpg, Entrance to the casino, as the Hard Rock (2015)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Lake Tahoe 1965 establishments in Nevada Casinos completed in 1965 Casinos in Stateline, Nevada Hard Rock Cafe Hotel buildings completed in 1965 Hotels established in 1965 Hotels in Stateline, Nevada Resorts in Nevada Casino hotels in Stateline, Nevada