Caesars Palace

This guide to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas replays New Year's Eve 1967, when a young daredevil named Evel Knievel talked his way past owner Jay Sarno's staff to get permission for a motorcycle jump over the resort's fountains. It traces Sarno's own showman streak, from the Teamsters-financed Roman fantasy he built here four years earlier to the moment he agreed to let Knievel try the leap. Look at those same fountains now, roughly one hundred forty feet across, the distance Knievel set out to clear.