Destination Guide
A potted history
Once a lush green scene splashed with numerous lakes and roamed by dinosaurs,
climatic change gradually turned it into a sun-baked desert. The lakes
disappeared, but the occasional bubbling of underground springs created
an oasis where Las Vegas is now.
A well-kept hunting secret to Native Americans for centuries, it wasn’t
literally put on the map until John C Fremont surveyed the region in 1844.
Next came the Mormon missionaries, who established a Las Vegas settlement
in the 1850s. The beginning of the modern age could be said to have started
in 1905 with the coming of the railroad. Boarding houses, shops and saloons
sprouted in what is now downtown Las Vegas, which became a city in 1911.
Then, this still-dusty territory struck dual jackpots in 1931: the legalisation
of gambling and the hiring of thousands of construction workers for the
nearby Hoover Dam, completed in 1935.
Gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and his high-profile Flamingo
Hotel are popularly credited with the founding of modern Las Vegas. Siegel,
bankrolled by mob friends, built what he called "a carpet joint"
modelled on Miami resorts, to attract the Hollywood crowd. It opened in
December 1946. In truth, a good five years before Bugsy steamrollered
into town, Tommy Hull had opened El Rancho Vegas in April 1941 (on the
now-vacant site opposite the current Sahara). This was the first resort
hotel, so the credit properly goes to him.
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