Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the Hoover Dam on Sept. 30, 1935. That ceremony was re-created today at the dam.

Celebrities flocked to see Hoover Dam

Celebrities streamed into Las Vegas long before neon-lit gambling palaces rose out of the desert.

They came in droves to see the city's first and biggest dam celebrity of all: Hoover Dam.

A society columnist -- or one of those pesky gossip columnists -- would have had a field day lurking at the Boulder Dam Hotel, which was built in 1933.

The famous and affluent flocked to Las Vegas, which almost overnight had nearly doubled in population to more than 8,000, to see the tallest dam in the world, standing 726 feet high and spanning 1,200 feet.

Seventy-five years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, quite possibly the first president to visit Las Vegas, spoke at the dam's dedication, a project that put 21,000 to work in the midst of the Great Depression.

That ceremony is being re-created today at the same location from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

The appeal of the gigantic modern marvel brought steady business to the elegant hotel, briefly the grand dame of its day. The first resort on the Strip, El Rancho Vegas, didn't open until 1940, nine years after gambling was legalized.

According to the hotel's website, the celebrity guests included:

■ Actress Bette Davis, then 27, who eventually won the best actress Oscar for 1935's "Dangerous."

■ Child film star Shirley Temple, all of 7 years old in 1935, who had just won a special Academy Award and was the top box office star for four years, from '35 to '38.

■ Comedian Harold Lloyd and actor Ronald Colman, film stars of that era.

■ Wallace Beery, the best actor Oscar winner for 1931's "The Champ." Two decades earlier, he had married a 17-year-old beauty who became actress/fashion icon Gloria Swanson, who played Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard."

■ Ex-cowboy, political wit and highest-paid actor of his time Will Rogers, who visited the dam site and died a month before the dedication.

■ Braving early day Sin City, the Vatican's Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli stayed at the hotel. Three-and-a-half years later, he would become Pope Pius XII (1939 to 1958).

■ Horror film icon Boris Karloff, the star of "Frankenstein" in 1931 and "Bride of Frankenstein" in 1935, stayed at the hotel to establish residency for a Nevada divorce.