Las Vegas

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Las Vegas is unique among U.S. cities. Famous for luxury casinos and show palaces offering non-stop recreation on the "Strip" and in downtown Casino Center, the city has over the years become synonymous with glitter and glamour. Las Vegas since the late 1980s has acquired another identity as a center for business, finance, transportation, and services; still the "Entertainment Capital of the World," it has actively and successfully cultivated a diversified economy. The Las Vegas resident can enjoy legalized gaming, yet more often will take advantage of the diverse range of cultural and recreational opportunities offered in the city and in the surrounding area.

The City in Brief

For more information on Las Vegas, visit Britannica.com.

A tourist economy and federal largesse made Las Vegas, Nevada, the only American metropolitan area founded in the twentieth century to reach one million in population. Yet its past and present are more complex and connected than its "sin city" image suggests.

Before the Neon

Native Americans lived in southern Nevada for thousands of years. Southern Paiutes were the only residents when Rafael Rivera, scouting for Mexican traders, became the first non-Native visitor in January 1830. In May 1844, John Frémont's mapmaking expedition named the area "Las Vegas," Spanish for "the Meadows," for its water and grass.

Aware of Frémont's description, the Mormon leader Brigham Young chose Las Vegas for a mission. Arriving on 14 June 1855, missionaries built a fort, part of which still stands. They left within three years. The miner Octavius Gass started buying land in 1865 and eventually owned nearly 1,000 acres, until old debts cost him his holdings. After the new owner, Archibald Stewart, died in a gunfight in 1884, his widow, Helen, ran the ranch until 1902, selling all but 160 acres to Senator William Clark, a Montana copper baron planning a Los Angeles-to-Salt Lake railroad. When the Union Pacific threatened to compete, they became partners.

After Clark auctioned land on 15 May 1905, Las Vegas became a railroad town, serving passengers and servicing trains. A railroad subsidiary, the Las Vegas Land and Water Company, controlled municipal improvements while limiting growth. Named Clark County seat in 1909 and incorporated as a city in 1911, Las Vegas catered to sin with the red-light district known as Block 16, which offered drinking, gambling, and prostitution despite laws to the contrary.

The Prewar and Postwar Boom

Hoover Dam construction, begun in March 1931, changed Las Vegas forever. Depression victims poured in, seeking jobs. The federal government built Boulder City to house workers, whose trips downtown boosted the economy—as did the dam's visitors, prompting Las Vegas to market itself as a tourist venue with the annual Helldorado, with parade and rodeo. The New Deal promoted growth: Nevada led the nation in per capita federal spending, and Las Vegas received such projects as a school and parks.

Democratic control of the presidency and Congress aided Las Vegas. Nevada Senator Pat McCarran, elected in 1932, used his seniority and power to obtain federal projects, thereby infusing payroll and attracting new residents. An Army Air Corps gunnery school opened in 1941 and became Nellis Air Force Base, still a key source of jobs and spending. To the southeast, the Basic Magnesium plant refined manganese for the war; the surrounding town, Henderson, housed southern Nevada's only heavy industry as the plant moved into chemical production and research. Northwest of town, the Nevada Test Site opened in 1951 and began conducting aboveground (later underground) atomic tests; while testing was discontinued, the site still supported research at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Las Vegas increasingly relied on gambling, which the state legalized in 1931. The downtown area benefited, especially in the late 1930s, and many illegal gamblers driven out of California relocated to Las Vegas. During World War II, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, representing gangster Meyer Lansky, invested in downtown casinos and took over construction of the Flamingo on the nascent "strip." The El Rancho Vegas became the Las Vegas Strip's first resort in 1941, followed in 1942 by the Hotel Last Frontier—both were ranch-style. The Flamingo, Las Vegas's first luxury resort, opened late in 1946, but proved unprofitable. Its turnaround came too late for Siegel, who was killed in July 1947.

The Flamingo's profits inspired more organized crime investment, while for their part gamblers relished practicing their trade legally. A spate of hotel-casinos opened in the 1950s and 1960s, often with loans from the Teamsters and the Bank of Las Vegas, the first bank to loan to casinos; most lenders disdained gambling and feared that mobsters would refuse to repay loans. A disproportionate number of casino owners were Jewish, expanding an already thriving Jewish community.

Las Vegas's image suffered not only for its criminal connections but also for its reputation as the "Mississippi of the West." Banned from patronizing resorts where they performed, black entertainers stayed in segregated West Las Vegas until the late 1950s. While a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter formed in the late 1920s, it was not until the 1950s and 1960s—by which time the black population had grown larger and had gained an organized, educated leadership—that discrimination was overcome. Thus, Las Vegas reflected the national civil rights movement, complete with unrest and lawsuits.

The Age of Legitimacy?

The last third of the century brought corporatization to Las Vegas and casinos to new jurisdictions. State laws passed in 1967 and 1969 enabled publicly traded companies to buy casinos; previously, every stockholder would have been licensed. Thus, Kirk Kerkorian built the International, bought the Flamingo, and sold both to Hilton; he subsequently built the MGM Grand. Steve Wynn parlayed a Bank of Las Vegas loan and a small piece of Strip property into ownership of the Golden Nugget. Aided by junk bond trader Michael Milken, Wynn built the Mirage, Treasure Island, and Bellagio, and owned other properties outside Las Vegas, before Kerkorian took over his Mirage Resorts in 2000. Local operators such as the Boyd Group, Station Casinos, and Harrah's became publicly traded, invested elsewhere, or teamed with Indian reservations operating casinos.

Las Vegas also reinvented itself. "Theming" went back to the 1930s, when operators patterned casinos on the Old West; Caesars Palace's Roman statuary restored the idea in the 1960s. Megaresort builders in the 1990s imploded old resorts, often replaced by replicas—the Luxor (Egypt), Excalibur (medieval castles), Paris, and New York, New York—and enormous properties that were almost cities unto themselves, such as the 5,000-plus-room MGM Grand and the Venetian. By 2001, Las Vegas boasted more than 120,000 hotel rooms, filled annually by millions of tourists.

The city fueled and benefited from this growth. Each census revealed Las Vegas as one of the fastest-growing American cities, if not the fastest, with the population doubling or nearly doubling every decade. The once physically small city expanded as the Howard Hughes Corporation developed Summerlin to the northwest. Green Valley helped Henderson evolve from an industrial city into a suburb. Three Sun City communities attracted "snowbirds" escaping cold winters or retirees seeking an active lifestyle and moderate cost of living. Latinos grew in influence and topped 20 percent of the population in the 2000 census. That same census showed Las Vegas to be home to 1,375,765 of Nevada's 1,998,257 residents, and more ethnically diverse than the rest of the state.

Understandably, problems accompanied growth. Growing suburban communities prompted white flight from the inner city. Schools were overcrowded. Newcomers understandably lacked a sense of community and history, prompting apathy about local affairs and difficulties in developing a cultural community—no performing arts center and classical music companies beset by financial troubles. Downtown declined and redevelopment proved difficult, while the county government controlled prime land, including the Strip. Gaming and other businesses sometimes clashed over economic diversification, yet shared ample political power. Las Vegas enjoyed a large majority in the state legislature, but its delegation voted more by party than region.

While obtaining water from Arizona's allotment from the Colorado River appeared to ease concern over Las Vegas's ability to maintain an adequate water supply, debates still raged over air quality, education, traffic, the tax structure, and concentrated political power. Neither Las Vegas's success, nor its troubles, seemed likely to abate as the twenty-first century began.

Bibliography

Denton, Sally, and Roger Morris. The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America, 1947–2000. New York: Knopf, 2001.

Elliott, Gary E. The New Western Frontier: An Illustrated History of Greater Las Vegas. Encinitas, Calif.: Heritage, 1999.

Gottdiener, M., Claudia Collins, and David R. Dickens. Las Vegas: The Social Production of an All-American City. London: Blackwell, 1998.

Hopkins, A. D., and K. J. Evans, eds. The First 100: Portraits of the Men and Women Who Shaped Las Vegas. Las Vegas: Huntington Press, 1999.

Moehring, Eugene P. Resort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas, 1930– 2000. 2d rev. ed. Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2000.

City in southern Nevada.

• A famous gambling and entertainment center.