Frontier Club: Guy McAfee's Downtown Gambling Room

The May 1939 opening

Collector lists sometimes begin the club in 1935, but the strongest newspaper-based evidence identifies McAfee's opening on May 11, 1939. Opening publicity named McAfee as president, Fred Krieger as secretary-treasurer and separate day and night floor managers.

The building had earlier commercial uses. Its transition to a casino belonged to the post-1931 growth of Fremont Street, where existing structures could become gambling destinations without a resort campus.

A Western sign and a tropical neighbor

Opening publicity promised a large elevated sign with a bucking bronco and other period Western imagery. Photographs show how Frontier participated in the neon competition that helped create Glitter Gulch.

McAfee's neighboring Mandalay Bar used a South Seas theme, including tropical drinks and simulated storm effects in contemporary descriptions. Those features belong to the adjacent bar, not automatically inside Frontier's casino.

The contrast demonstrates early Las Vegas's appetite for themed environments at storefront scale, before later resorts expanded the same principle across entire buildings.

Race betting and working customers

Moe Sedway was associated with the internal Frontier Turf Club race operation. Customers could follow horses as well as play casino games. The exact wire arrangements and complete floor layout are not established.

The club advertised a welcome to women, while dealer recollections place downtown gambling within a market supported by industrial workers and ordinary local traffic. McAfee's business network mattered, but the customers were not all celebrities or high rollers.

Keeping the race concession distinct from the larger casino also avoids treating every named operator as owner of the entire premises.

Successors on the block

The principal chronology ends Frontier's phase in 1953, with signs removed in 1954 before Lucky Strike opened at the address. Later Lucky Casino use and Golden Nugget expansion changed the block again.

Frontier's historical importance is its combination of small scale and extensive connections. A single Fremont frontage could link casino play, horse betting, themed drinking, neon spectacle and several operators' interests. Its history is more precise when separated from similarly named Strip resorts and from the businesses that followed it.