In 1855, it began as a religious settlement.
But today, it's no monastery.
Peer-awaited experience is an excitement you'll find nowhere but Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is glitter, glamour, and high-rolling gamblers. It's slot machines, sun bathers, and a sensational strip. It's nonstop energy and action.
Las Vegas is a city that defies description. It's a one-of-a-kind place that's constantly reinventing itself, where the words bigger and better inspire a parade of posh casinos, mega resorts, and more live entertainment than anywhere else in the world.
And the natives are friendly.
Las Vegas is always ready to party with the nearly 30 million visitors who come each year. It's the most entertaining city in America. The lights are always on.
It's hard to imagine a time when Las Vegas was merely an oasis off the Spanish Trail to Los Angeles. In 1829, a young Mexican scout, Rafael Rivera, discovered an artesian spring in an area called Las Vegas, meaning the Meadows.
Other explorers included Army Lieutenant John C. Fremont and a colony of Mormons.
It was the railroad, however, that finally brought civilization to town. In the summer of 1904, the tent town of Las Vegas quickly sprang up, complete with saloons, stores, and boarding houses.
The town was officially founded May 15, 1905. In one day, the Union Pacific Railroad auctioned 1,200 lots in what is now a casino-lined glitter gulch.
The young boomtown thrived, and along with it, an unquenchable thirst for gambling, despite a strict anti-gambling law intended to bar gambling from the city gates forever.
Forever, however, lasted about three weeks in Las Vegas, as underground gambling flourished.
Finally, in 1931, the Nevada legislature recognized gambling as a lucrative industry and made it legal.
Casinos prospered, first along downtown's Fremont Street and during the 1940s on the now-famous strip.
Young Las Vegas was growing up, virtually escaping economic hardships, thanks to jobs provided during the development of the Union Pacific Railroad, an ongoing love affair with Lady Luck, and construction of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, about 30 miles away in Black Canyon.
In 1928, the U.S. Congress passed the Boulder Canyon Project Act in an attempt to tame the erratic, often destructive Colorado River.
The project, including Hoover Dam, the All-American Canal, and the town of Boulder City, employed more than 5,000 people.
Backing up the Colorado, Virgin, and Muddy Rivers, the Arch Gravity Dam was completed in 1935.
660 feet thick at its base and 726 feet high, Hoover Dam formed Lake Mead, providing water for some 25 million people.
Today, Las Vegas is the largest American city founded in the 20th century.
There is no place on Earth quite like it. Las Vegas breaks all the rules and redefines the meaning of the word fun.
It's an adult playground built on fantasy, complete with showgirls, an erupting volcano, a dragon, pirates, ships, castle towers, even a pyramid and a sphinx.
Thrill seekers, animal lovers, shoppers, adventure seekers, leisure seekers, sun seekers, fun lovers of all ages, even championship rodeo fans, all are welcome here.
Museums house everything from wildlife art to wearable art.
Las Vegas works around the clock to accommodate the fortune seekers who come from all walks of life to try their luck at just about any form of gambling imaginable.
All to the tune of clinking coins and a never ending hope that maybe this time they'll strike it rich.
Despite the wide variety of electronic and computerized gambling devices, live table games still claim center stage.
Of course, whatever game you choose, the object is to hit the proverbial jackpot.
Las Vegas is definitely a serious gambling town.
During the 1940s, one of the most celebrated resorts on the strip was the Flamingo Hotel owned by mobster Benjamin Bugsy Siegel.
Six months after the hotel's opening, Bugsy was shot to death.
The Flamingo, as Bugsy knew it, is long gone, though the management keeps his memory alive in a prominently displayed brass plaque.
Today, the Hilton Hotel Group owns and operates the hotel. Now, the Flamingo Hilton.
Gambling is big business. Nevada casinos won $550 million, for example, from just 54 tables in one year in the preferred game of high rollers, baccarat.
The casinos constantly try to outdo each other to entice serious gamblers by offering million dollar credit lines and complimentary lodging in extravagant villas and penthouses.
The Las Vegas Hilton, for example, owns three penthouses for this purpose.
Of course, not everyone is a high roller. Las Vegas lures the budget-minded as well as the big spender with one incredible resort after another.
The MGM Grand Hotel Casino and Theme Park, for example, is the largest entertainment resort of its kind and has the world's largest resort hotel casino.
A short distance away, the resort hotel Treasure Island brings Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate adventure novel to life.
Every 90 minutes, weather permitting, a full-scale battle ensues in the outdoor theater with life-size ships, catapulting sailors, and buildings that explode.
Las Vegas takes the concept of one-upmanship to new heights.
How about a 50-foot volcano, coconut-scented no less, that erupts every 15 minutes after dark?
The garage is a tropical Polynesian paradise of waterfalls and lush foliage.
The resort features a 90-foot-high atrium, a 20,000-gallon aquarium, and two natural habitats, one for dolphins and another for the rare white tigers used in the Siegfried and Roy magic show.
At night, this opulent golden white resort dresses up for a citywide fantastic show of neon and light that sets off a glittering multifaceted skyline.
Caesar's Palace is the epitome of majestic Greco-Roman style, with classic statuary, fountains, a marble-inlaid pool, and a miniature replica of ancient Rome.
Ever slept in a pyramid? You can, at the Luxor Hotel Casino, complete with replicas of Egyptian hieroglyphics and King Tut's tomb.
In front of the 30-story, 350-foot glass pyramid, built by Circus Circus Enterprises Inc., is a 10-story sphinx with mysterious eyes that can shoot lasers toward a water lagoon.
As the light show continues, water boils in the lagoon, erupting into a larger-than-life screen with a hologram of King Tut himself.
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