The Tropicana Casino, a relic of Las Vegas' Mafia era, is brought down | Las Vegas

With rumblings and colorful flashes, the last true mob-era casino in Las Vegas, the Tropicana, a landmark hotel and gaming parlor, was reduced to rubble on Wednesday.

It was no coincidence that the rat pack's legendary haunt and the place James Bond described as “pretty cozy” in 007's 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever, the Tropicana's heyday, suffered an elaborate implosion in the early hours of the morning was intentionally destroyed.

The hotel towers collapsed during a celebration that included fireworks. For a city that loves new beginnings, it was the first implosion in nearly a decade, cleared to make way for a new baseball stadium.

“Las Vegas, in classic Las Vegas style, has turned many of these implosions into spectacles,” Geoff Schumacher, historian and vice president of exhibitions and programs at the Mob Museum, told the Associated Press.

Former casino mogul Steve Wynn changed the way Las Vegas blew up casinos in 1993 with the implosion of the dunes to make way for the Bellagio. In addition to thinking about televising the event, Wynn invented a fantastical story for the implosion, making it seem like pirate ships were shooting into the dunes at his other casino across the street.

From then on, says Schumacher, people in Las Vegas had the feeling that destruction on this scale was worth seeing. “Sin City” hasn’t blown up a casino on the Las Vegas Strip since 2016, when the Riviera’s last tower was leveled for a convention center expansion.

That leaves only the Flamingo from the city's mob era left on the Strip. But, Schumacher said, the flamingo's original structures are long gone. The casino was completely rebuilt in the 1990s.

The Tropicana, the third-oldest casino on the Strip, closed in April after welcoming guests for 67 years, and its past under mob control has long cemented its place in the city's history.

Behind the scenes of the casino's opening in 1957, the Tropicana had ties to organized crime, most notably through reputed gangster Frank Costello. He was shot in the head weeks after the Tropicana's New York debut and survived, but police found a piece of paper in his coat pocket with the Tropicana's exact earnings figures, revealing the gang's involvement in the casino.

In the 1970s, federal authorities investigating mobsters in Kansas City charged more than a dozen agents with conspiring to skim $2 million in gambling revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. Charges related to the Tropicana alone resulted in five convictions.

There were no public areas for the controlled implosion, but Tropicana fans had a chance to say goodbye to the ancient Vegas relic in April.

“Old Vegas, here we go,” said Joe Zappulla, a New Jersey resident, with tears in his eyes as he left the casino just before the locks on the doors were opened.