City Overview
Few cities bring to mind such images of sheer excess as Las Vegas. Located in the middle of the arid Mojave Desert, at the southern tip of the state of Nevada, Las Vegas is an oasis of life, energy and money – a city whose raison d’être is entertainment. With soaring temperatures during the summer and moderate winters, the city is visited all year round. Las Vegas may have little more than one million inhabitants but its airport is the ninth busiest in the world, daily spewing out hordes of tourists hoping to win big bucks at the thousands of gambling tables or one-armed bandits (slot machines). Over 35 million people visit Las Vegas every year, staying in the city’s 130,000 hotel rooms. According to the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, Las Vegas is now the fastest growing city in North America with an estimated two acres of land being developed every 24-hours and seeing approximately 50,000 people annually choosing to make the city and suburbs their home.
Ironically, Las Vegas’ beginnings were, if anything, humble. In the 18th century, the spot where the city now stands earned the named Las Vegas (Spanish for ‘The Plains’), because of a natural spring that created greenery in the dry desert. The city itself was founded in 1905 (as a stopover on the Union Pacific railway between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City) but it remained a remote backwater until the 1930s. In 1931, however, gambling was made legal and Las Vegas quickly began to assume its present character. At first, it drew the droves of workers building the nearby Hoover Dam. Soon, it became a gambling and vacation Mecca for the entire country – it attracted stars like Frank Sinatra, Elvis and Liberace and became America’s premiere entertainment hub. It also attracted the mob, an aspect of the city’s character depicted in countless movies, including Ocean’s Eleven (1960 & 2001), Casino (1995) and Bugsy (1991). By the 1960s, Las Vegas began cleaning up its act. Gambling remained its principal draw but the casinos began to fall under the control of large corporations and the city was increasingly repackaged as a family destination. Golf courses abound, as do shows, theme parks, shopping malls and a growing number of museums, such as the Las Vegas Natural History Museum and the Liberace Museum.
Today, Las Vegas is booming as never before. The 1990s saw a trend towards building enormous hotel complexes competing with one another for the title of largest hotel in the world and it has not let up. The competition was won by the city-like MGM Grand, whose capacity of over 5,000 rooms has yet to be bettered, although the newly opened Wynn Las Vegas is certainly going to give them a run for their money. More recently, the trend has been towards recreating mini-versions of cities like New York, Paris and Venice. The Downtown, with its smaller, more intimate and seedier casinos, remains the guardian of old Las Vegas character.
Entertainment so dominates Las Vegas that it is the backbone of the city’s economy, creating vibrant hotel, retail and hospitality industries. Other industries, such as construction, to a large degree owe their existence to the fact that hotels need to be built or expanded. it’s the city’s sheer exuberance in attracting visitors has created something along the lines of a city-sized theme park. Its residents lead normal lives in normal suburbs but to visitors, it is an endless playground of neon lights, hotel lounges, topless revues, live entertainment and casinos.
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