Bill Harrah signed the papers to purchase George's Gateway club at South Shore Lake Tahoe in January of 1955. Harrah's club in Reno was doing well, but it really irked him that there could be so much action going on in the "crummy little clubs" at Lake Tahoe, compared to his nicer clubs in Reno. He just had to be a part of them.After expanding the false facade like the other clubs had, Harrah's maintenance department started going through the property to improve the heating and cooling systems, the water system, and reconditioning the small kitchen. Crews of workers also brought several truckloads of new, more liberal pay-off slot machines up to the new club.

The cleanup and expansion took longer than expected as the now dilapidated Quonset hut was being expanded into a more respectable, but still questionable, new club. Finally updated, the club opened on June 20th and business was excellent.Harrah 's Lake Club displaced Dopey Norman's, a small club run by Norman Reinburg from March of 1953, and Tony's Club, another small property on the lake side of highway 50 run by Tony Grech and his manager, Rocky Basile.

Instead of shutting down shop like the casinos at Lake Tahoe had always done after Labor Day, Bill Harrah and Bob Ring came up with the idea of a year-round vacation spot. Although the property did not have hotel rooms, there were a few motels that were amenable to the idea of more winter business.According to Bob Ring, "the Lake Club needed some reliable transportation, and we had to have the roads cleared at a more realistic rate than what would ever be done by Cal-Trans. Working with Greyhound was easy, Cal-Trans, forget about it. "

"It was easier to just buy some snowplows and have our own workers do the roads. Some plows were leased and some were privately owned, but they did a super job. When the bus travelers arrived at the Lake Club they got a refund of their ticket, and a free dinner. "Continued Ring," I think we started with three chartered buses from San Francisco, and soon got to about 40 or 50 a day from more than two-dozen cities in Northern California. "

All of the properties at Lake Tahoe benefited from the added publicity ad success of the winter and then year-round bus service. Before the boom, however, Harrah managed to get control of the Stateline Country Club, which had been in business on the mountainside of Highway 50 for over 20 years.Now there were Harrah's casinos on each side of the highway, just as there were Harrah's casinos on either side of what would become Lincoln Alley in Reno.