Posted on: September 1, 2025, 07:21h.
Last updated on: August 29, 2025, 10:43h.
After acquiring both the Desert Inn — his home from late 1966 through late 1970 — and the Frontier in 1967, billionaire Howard Hughes is said to have had a private tunnel constructed beneath Las Vegas Boulevard so he could move between the two properties without being seen.
When we began investigating the origins of this popular story, we figured it was a conflation of the mystique of Hughes with the Desert Inn Road Super Arterial.
Famously reclusive and paranoid, Hughes did have his surroundings modified for privacy. This included the sealed-off floors and restricted elevator access he ordered at the DI. And the arterial features a very real tunnel, opened in 1996, that whisks Desert Inn Road beneath the Las Vegas Strip to alleviate traffic congestion.
But we had no idea our investigation would reveal a more likely reason — a secret about Hughes’ Las Vegas years that we had never heard before.
Tunnel Vision
The existence of Hughes’ secret tunnel was supposedly revealed by a Las Vegas icon who performed at both the Desert Inn and Frontier regularly. In this old Tripadvisor forum about the tunnel, a user named @vegasallan wrote in 2012 that “Wayne Newton claims to have used” the tunnel.
But a thorough search of all of Newton’s published interviews, and his 1994 memoir, reveals not a single reference to it.
And a full-blown subterranean passage underneath Las Vegas Boulevard would have left a trail of county permits and excavation records — none of which exist.
So why is this myth so persistent?
The Real Reason
At age 94, Paul B. Winn is the last surviving member of Hughes’ inner circle. He served as Hughes’ director of corporate records from 1957 through Hughes’ death in 1976, and previously helped us bust the myth that his former boss bought the Silver Slipper just to dim its sign so he could get a good night’s sleep at the DI.
When we posed the story of the secret tunnel to Winn, his reply shocked us.
According to Winn, Bill Gay — who became president of Hughes’ Summa Corporation after Robert Maheau was ousted in 1970 — “actually did investigate the possibility of putting up a bridge between the Desert Inn and the Frontier.”
This would have been the very first pedestrian bridge spanning the Las Vegas Strip. But it wouldn’t have been a secret. It was intended for public use.
“They wanted to build it wide enough to have slot machines so people could gamble and take their time as they crossed over,” Winn told Casino.org.
Over time and hundreds of retellings, the bridge must have become a secret tunnel, which seems much more Hughes-esque.
So why didn’t the bridge get built?
“It was impossible because Las Vegas Boulevard was designated at the time as a federal highway and a bridge was not allowed,” Winn said.
US Route 91 wouldn’t be decommissioned until 1974, when Interstate 15 was completed. And the first pedestrian bridge to cross the Strip, connecting the MGM Grand with New York-New York, opened in 1995.
And that’s how (we assume) this one got started.
Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on Casino.org. Click here to read previously busted Vegas myths. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.
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