From "Casinos and their Ashtrays" by Art Anderson...who gave much credit to our own casino historian, the late Janice O'Neal.

George Gannon took a 30 year lease on a quonset hut at the south end of Lake Tahoe (Stateline) in 1949. He opened George's Gateway Club, only in the summer, next door to the Wagon Wheel Saloon which was owned by Harvey Gross (Harvey's). In 1955, Bill Harrah walked into the Gateway Club and looked around. What he saw, "...was a crummy run-down place, just awful.", but it was doing two to three times the business that Harrah's in Reno was doing. Bill Harrah bought the lease on George's Gateway Club and fixed it up in Harrah style. This gave Bill Harrah his first start at Lake Tahoe. Became part of Harvey's Wagon Wheel in 1959.