Las Vegas may be running on a combination of new construction and nostalgia, but the fumes are still potent. As gambling became legal in more and more states, towns built around games of chance have seen their luck run out. People looking to roll the dice used to have limited options: Las Vegas in the west, Atlantic City in the east, and Biloxi in between. On February 17, 2021, a mile away on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, a controlled demolition using nearly 3,000 sticks of dynamite brought down the 34-story tower of what was once the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.

Businesses are still struggling to attract tourists after a months-long shutdown.

A discarded face mask on the boardwalk.

A desolate stretch just off the boardwalk.

It has since reopened as the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, but another former Trump property was not as lucky. But after a few decades of hosting high (and low) rollers, the Taj Mahal closed its gold-trimmed doors in October of 2016. Housed beneath the gilded bulb domes were multiple restaurants, gift shops, show rooms, and the nation’s first casino strip club. The Taj Mahal-built at a cost of nearly a billion dollars-had 120,000 square feet of gaming space and 2,010 guest rooms. The casino and hotel, billed as the “eighth wonder of the world” when it opened in the spring of 1990, made its debut like most big dreams in the last two decades of 20th-century corporate America: with a laser and fireworks display. When we visited five years ago, you could almost hear the death rattle outside of the Trump Taj Mahal, where workers had been on strike since July. Atlantic City, at least as a destination, has been dying for decades. Places become abandoned similarly to how most living things die: slowly, and then suddenly all at once. Post-apocalyptic landscapes are often most notable not for what remains, but for what is missing: the people. Pre-pandemic, it felt novel to explore a ghost town or resort in its off-season. Since the early 1800s, the city, located on a barrier island off the coast of New Jersey, has offered ample opportunities to do both.

She enjoys feeding her money into slot machines I prefer to exchange mine for dusty souvenirs. In October, 2016, I took my mom to Atlantic City for her birthday.

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