Skip to content
Vegas Retold

The history of Castaways (Las Vegas Strip)

Opened 1957 Closed 1987

The Mirage’s illuminated hotel tower above its lagoon and waterfalls in 2013, shown as later-site context for the demolished Strip Castaways; this is not the Castaways building.
The Mirage on December 25, 2013, a later resort whose grounds included the former Strip Castaways site. Castaways had closed in 1987 and is not shown.

King of Hearts / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Image source· License

Original photograph retained without editorial alteration. Responsive displays may resize and crop the presentation.

Castaways on the Strip is remembered for an unlikely landmark: a carved teakwood Jain temple displayed in its courtyard as the Gateway to Luck. The hotel-casino stood at 3320 South Las Vegas Boulevard, on land later incorporated into the Mirage. It was a different property from the former Showboat that subsequently adopted the Castaways name on Fremont Street.

Before the Castaways name

The site’s lodging history preceded the Castaways brand. Vintage Las Vegas traces a succession of roadside auto-court names, followed by the Sans Souci hotel redevelopment in 1955 and a casino and showroom opening in 1957. The Castaways name followed in 1963. These were different stages of development, rather than one opening day for every building and business.

A hotel and an intermittent casino

Gaming was also intermittent. UNLV’s Castaways collection history describes repeated casino closures and reopenings during the 1963–1987 period. A hotel could continue accommodating guests while its casino was shut, so a long hotel history should not be read as proof of continuous gambling. Howard Hughes acquired the property in the late 1960s; it later operated within his Summa organization.

The temple’s life beyond the casino

The temple carried a history beyond Las Vegas. Built for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, it eventually became decorative architecture at Castaways. Its casino presentation gave a religious structure a new commercial meaning. Members of the Jain community sought to preserve it, and the Jain Center of Southern California’s commemorative account describes its donation, dismantling, storage and eventual reassembly at the center. The artifact survived the resort that had displayed it.

The Mirage replaces the Strip site

Castaways closed in 1987 and was demolished for Steve Wynn’s Mirage project, which opened in 1989. The former Castaways occupied only part of the larger redevelopment, near the Mirage’s northern Strip frontage. This was a replacement of the earlier casino site, not merely a Castaways renovation or a new sign on the same hotel.

One name, two different properties

The reused name can obscure that sequence. In 2000, the owners of the separate Showboat hotel-casino at 2800 Fremont Street announced that it would become Castaways. That property’s later closure belongs to its own history. The Strip Castaways had already disappeared. Here, the dated Mirage photograph illustrates what followed on the wider site; it does not show the Castaways building or establish the outline of its former grounds.

  1. The Strip Castaways and its casino interruptions

  2. The earlier auto courts, hotel and casino

  3. The historical street address

  4. The Hughes ownership period

  5. The Gateway to Luck’s religious history

  6. Preserving and reassembling the wooden temple

  7. A different property adopts the name

  8. Keeping the two Castaways histories separate

  9. The replacement resort’s opening

  10. The wider site after the Mirage

What remains uncertain

  • 1957 dates the casino/showroom stage in the selected historical chronology. The earlier motel, 1955 hotel redevelopment and 1963 Castaways name are separate milestones; no exact first gaming day or continuous operation is established.
  • Historical accounts differ on the stages and dates of the Wynn purchase and the temple’s transfer. This account does not assign one purchase or donation year.
  • The former-site marker is approximate. Later resort addresses, generic coordinates in archive metadata and the entire Mirage footprint should not be substituted for the original Castaways site.
  • No rights-cleared photograph of the original operating Castaways has been established here. The selected 2013 Mirage view is explicitly later resort context, not an original Castaways image or proof of identical buildings.
  • The former Mirage closed in 2024 for Hard Rock conversion. The later photograph does not establish surviving attractions or current visitor access.

This site through time

Replaced by The Mirage

1987 – 1989

The Strip Castaways closed in 1987 and was demolished as the Mirage site was assembled. The Mirage opened in 1989 on a larger property that included the former Castaways grounds near its northern Strip frontage. This was a replacement development, rather than a renamed Castaways hotel. The former Castaways occupied only part of the later Mirage resort site.

Historical source — UNLV Special Collections, Castaways Hotel Photograph Collection PH-00270, historical background; Mirage opening corroborated by The Neon Museum, The Mirage & Beyond (https://neonmuseum.org/the-mirage-beyond/). Former-site vicinity corroborated by Vintage Las Vegas Strip Index, The Mirage section (https://files.vintagelasvegas.com/strip.html).

  • The former casino footprint has not been reconstructed as a surveyed boundary. The Castaways map pin indicates an approximate former-site vicinity, not the entire later Mirage resort.
  • This relationship concerns the original Strip Castaways, not the former Showboat on Fremont Street that later used the Castaways name.
Suggest a correction or source