Hotel icon Barron Hilton, one of the fathers of modern-day Las Vegas, died September 20 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 91.
Hilton, who took over the family’s famed hotel chain in 1966 and led it for 30 years, was instrumental in bringing mainstream legitimacy to Las Vegas with his purchases in 1970 of the Flamingo Hotel and the off-Strip International, later renamed the Las Vegas Hilton.
At the time, Hilton Hotels was the first company listed on the New York Stock Exchange to enter the casino business, and it coincided with the beginnings of the push by Nevada regulators to eliminate the influence of organized crime, which for decades had held sway over much of the industry.
“His father started the hotel business, but the gaming part of the company was something that Barron really took ownership of and really felt was his,” said Marc Grossman, a vice president with Hilton Hotels from 1992 until he retired in 2007.
It didn’t come easy. Barron “really had to convince the board of directors to get involved in the gaming business in Las Vegas,” Grossman said.
But it paid off.
It was “a good signal for Nevada—and especially Las Vegas𑁋that this was a decent place for corporations to invest,” said Michael Green, an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Hilton Hotels did extremely well by it too. At one point, the Flamingo was one of the most profitable in the Hilton chain, and Barron oversaw expansions of both the Flamingo and the Las Vegas Hilton and spearheaded the company’s expansion into Reno and Laughlin. By the early ’90s, with Las Vegas in the throes of its first great era of expansion, gaming accounted for about two-thirds of Hilton’s business.
Grossman believes he never got the credit he deserved as an innovator, particularly “his foresightedness that a mainstream hotel company could be a force in the gaming business, thereby having two good revenue streams.”
But then, unlike his father, Hilton founder Conrad Hilton, a larger than life character who relished his celebrity status, “Barron lived a much quieter life,” Grossman said, enjoying activities such as fishing, hunting and aviation.
He also spent a lot of time in Nevada, where he owned a ranch, the Flying M Ranch near Hawthorne in north of the state.
“Barron had this real affinity for Nevada,” Grossman said.
The ranch was sold in 2016 for $19.4 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
Born in Dallas in 1927, Barron Hilton served as a Navy photographer during World War II and remained an avid pilot throughout his life. He joined Hilton Hotels in 1951 after first establishing himself as an entrepreneur and businessman in his own right, running a successful orange juice products company, an oil company and an aircraft-leasing business. He also founded Carte Blanche, a consumer credit card, and was a charter owner of the American Football League, founding the then-San Diego Chargers, and playing a role in overseeing the AFL-NFL merger.
A decade after his retirement, Hilton’s 2,800 hotels were purchased by The Blackstone Group. In 2008, the gaming operations were swallowed up in the private equity buyout that transformed Harrah’s Entertainment into Caesars Entertainment.
He is survived by eight children, 15 grandchildren among whom are famed heiresses Paris Hilton and Nicky Hilton and four great-grandchildren.
Hilton was chairman emeritus of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and left about 97 percent of his estate to the foundation, which expects the donation to grow its endowment from $2.9 billion to $6.3 billion.
“He was a great and very generous man,” said David Siegel, owner of the Westgate, as the Las Vegas Hilton is now known. “I am proud to own his famous hotel.”
