Venue History
The Northern Club at 15 East Fremont Street is historic in Las Vegas gaming lore — it received Nevada’s first legal gaming license for Clark County on March 20, 1931, shortly after statewide legalization. Located in the heart of downtown’s early casino district, the Northern Club traces its roots to a saloon and hotel operation that opened April 1, 1912 (as “The Northern”) and evolved into a full-blown gaming venue under the Stocker family. In the years preceding legalization, the Northern had operated liquor and gambling semi-clandestinely, taking advantage of the booming workforce drawn by the Hoover Dam project. When Nevada legalized wide-open gambling in 1931, Mayme Stocker and Joe H. Morgan were granted license \#1 to the Northern Club — notably making Mayme one of the first, if not the first woman to hold a gaming license in Las Vegas. Over the years the Northern Club changed ownership and names: in 1943 it became the Turf Club, later the Monte Carlo Club and eventually the Coin Castle before the property was absorbed into later downtown casino operations (and eventually the site redevelopment leading to the current downtown Fremont Street Experience corridor). Throughout its lifetime the Northern Club was smaller-scale compared to the Strip resorts, but it symbolized the downtown gamble-town era: bars, card rooms, high-stakes games and the rail-town social fabric of early Las Vegas. The Northern Club’s legacy is significant: it stands as the point of legal departure for casino gaming in Clark County, linking Las Vegas’s humble beginnings as a rail-town destination into the global gaming and resort mecca it would become. It also highlights the role of independent operators, early female gaming licensees, and the foundational downtown zone of Fremont Street. Though the building no longer operates under the Northern name, the site remains embedded in the city’s historic gaming fabric and is celebrated by collectors, historians and Las Vegas enthusiasts.
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