La Bayou, Casino in Downtown Las Vegas, US
La Bayou was a small, independent casino on Fremont Street Experience, the covered pedestrian zone in downtown Las Vegas lined with gaming venues and neon lights. It focused almost entirely on slot machines and had no hotel, restaurants, or entertainment stage attached to it.
The building started out as the Las Vegas Coffee House in 1913, years before the city became known for gambling. When Nevada legalized gaming in 1931, the owner at the time received one of the first gaming licenses in the state ever granted to a woman.
La Bayou kept coin-operated slot machines long after most casinos had switched to ticket-based systems, giving players a feel for how gambling used to work. This made it a rare holdout from an older era of gaming on Fremont Street.
La Bayou closed in 2016 and can no longer be visited as a standalone casino. The surrounding Fremont Street Experience area remains open and easy to navigate on foot, with most other venues accessible along the same covered walkway.
Staff handed out Mardi Gras beads to every visitor who walked through the door, a nod to the New Orleans carnival tradition that the casino's name also referenced. No other casino on the block offered anything quite like this as a greeting.
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