Page 102 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Southwest USA & National Parks

100  LAS VEGAS

The Changing Face of Las Vegas

No other city in the US has reinvented itself so often and with such
profitable results as Las Vegas. It is set in an unpromising landscape,
bordering three deserts, and artesian waters beneath the land first
supported life here. Successive groups, from Native Americans to
Mexican traders, Mormons, and railroad workers, all survived the
environment. They added to a unique set of factors that gave birth
to a Las Vegas they would barely recognize today.
The city’s early growth is linked to some of the biggest names in
20th-century show business, such as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, Helen Stewart was a local
unique personalities like the eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes, ranch owner who sold her
not to mention mobsters including the notorious Bugsy Siegel. land to the railroad, which
Today more than ever, Las Vegas is a dazzling city that fires the led to the founding of the
imagination; a playground of stretch limos, star-studded enter- city of Las Vegas in 1905.
tainment, and an “anything goes” ethos for those who can pay for it.

Downtown Las Vegas
The city grew up around Fremont Street in
Downtown Las Vegas in the early 1900s. By
the 1960s (see right), the area had begun to
suffer from competition from the Strip. Today,
the area has been revived as the Fremont
Street Experience (see below right and p122).

Roulette was one of the games offered in Las
Vegas once gambling was legalized in Nevada
in 1931. The city was a hedonistic escape from
the 1930s’ Depression.

Construction of the Hoover Dam, 34 miles
(55 km) from Las Vegas on the Colorado River,
brought a rise in the city’s fortunes (see p125).
By the early 1920s Las Vegas had declined,
and its population had fallen to 2,300. When
construction began in 1931, money and people
flowed into town, and by the early 1930s the
population had swelled to around 7,500. Tens of
thousands of visitors arrived to see the building
of the dam and to enjoy the new gambling
clubs springing up.

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