Why is Las Vegas located where it is?
score:20
Las Vegas was not founded in a particularly random desert. It was founded on a meadow (las vegas is Spanish for "the meadows") watered by the nearby Big Springs, or Las Vegas Springs. As such it was a watering spot on the Old Spanish Trail.
After the Civil War, O.D. Gass set up the first permanent white settlement there. Other settlers followed, and it was an important enough agricultural center to attract a stop on the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad. This put them within a day's reach of Los Angeles and the sea, contributing to substantial growth.
As the nearest major settlement to the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas also enjoyed an influx of population and money during its construction, and cheap electricity and tourists headed for Lake Mead after its completion. They were boosted again with the construction of nearby Nellis Air Force Base.
The aquifer feeding the springs that had first attracted settlers to the area were sucked dry by the 1950s, but by then the city was already by far the largest population center in southern Nevada, and tourism and the military had long since displaced agriculture in the local economy.
Upvote:9
The main reason that comes to mind at once are legal issues:
http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/97/03/chapt1.html
Nevada, legalizing casino gambling in 1931, was for almost 50 years one of two states with legalized casinos. (Maryland had them from 1949 to 1968, in some years with slot revenue exceeding Nevada's. Waldorf was the main center for this, but it was legal throughout the four Southern Maryland counties.) More states started legalizing casinos later, beginning with New Jersey in 1976.
More post
- 📝 Did the French Resistance kill civilians?
- 📝 What was the fighting style and equipment of 13th century Eastern European Baltic and Slavic cavalry?
- 📝 How much would 300 pounds (money value) weigh in Medieval England?
- 📝 What role did 17th c. luxury manufacturing play in the industrialization?
- 📝 What does "free and independent states" mean in the Declaration of Independence?
- 📝 In what European countries did non-hereditary nobility exist? (XVII-XIX centuries)
- 📝 Has diplomatic immunity ever been ignored in modern times?
- 📝 What does this acronym and the symbol in the middle represent?
- 📝 What is the earliest known reference to the phrase 'water of life'?
- 📝 In the USSR, did they ever stop 'officially' believing in the future Communist utopia?
- 📝 How did old international loans work?
- 📝 What route did the Hindenburg take when traveling from Germany to the U.S.?
- 📝 Did Google simply beat Microsoft to market?
- 📝 The US and Soviet Soldiers story related to Normandy
- 📝 Why is Napoleon III seen as a bad leader?
- 📝 Why did the East India Company accept the Government of India Act 1858?
- 📝 Was the Pantheon completely underwater when Rome flooded?
- 📝 GDP per capita of major combatants before and after WWII?
- 📝 Why has the American cowboy fashion/culture persisted until our current decade?
- 📝 Did the ancient Greeks have "taverns"?
- 📝 How were German soldiers chosen to be flown out of Stalingrad?
- 📝 Was a drop in standards of living a significant factor in the revolutions of 1848?
- 📝 Can I get my hands on a translation of Ahmad ibn Fadlan's manuscript?
- 📝 Could any Habsburg kings of Hungary speak Hungarian?
- 📝 Was Casablanca a "safe" place for the Allies to hold a global conference in January, 1943?
- 📝 What does the abbreviation "adhib." mean in historiography or archival science?
- 📝 Are there any surviving military textbooks from the Napoleonic era?
- 📝 What is the largest overnight depreciation?
- 📝 Why has the khopesh never been used since ancient Egypt?
- 📝 What was the purpose of Nazi extermination camps?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Why is Las Vegas located where it is?
- 📝 Why was the northern boundary of the Mongol empire set where it was?
- 📝 How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
- 📝 Why does the Gregorian calendar start where it does?
- 📝 Where were the best ancient wine regions in Israel, called Kerutim & Hatoulim in the Mishna, located on a map?
- 📝 Where and why were capital letters first used in English headlines?
- 📝 During the Siege of Alesia, why were certain Roman forts located outside the circumvallation lines?
- 📝 Where was the Ixcanha Maya community located during the Caste War of the Yucatán?
- 📝 Where and why did the colourful houses of Bristol start?
- 📝 Why is Musselburgh considered the first golf course, when St. Andrews was where golf was first played?
- 📝 Where was the ruling seat of East Francia located under Henry the Fowler?
- 📝 Why is the Bishopric of Canterbury located in London?
- 📝 Where were the British Forces located during Napoleon's Egypt Campaign?
- 📝 Why where individual servings replaced with shared dishes during the Song dynasty?
- 📝 Where did the idea of weeks originate and why do they have seven days?
- 📝 Why are the borders of the Islamic world where they are?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- 📝 Why was France granted an equal status among victors of World War II?
- 📝 Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?
- 📝 Why bother attacking castles at all? Why not go around?
- 📝 Why did the Confederacy think they could win the American Civil War?
- 📝 Why are Germans referred to so differently in different languages?
- 📝 Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?
- 📝 Why was Poland spared from the Black Death?
- 📝 Why China was able to unify and not Europe?
- 📝 Why didn't Imperial Japan attack the Soviet Union during World War 2?
- 📝 Why were old fortifications shaped like stars and not like circles?
- 📝 Why didn't Germany blockade the Strait of Gibraltar during WW2?
- 📝 Why does the United States keep using "old" date representations and imperial system, while being in the minority?
- 📝 Why is the consensus that WW2 started on September 1, 1939 and not July 7, 1937?