i-vegas - History of Vegas

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History of Vegas

Prehistoric Southern Nevada was a virtual marsh of abundant water and vegetation. Over time the marsh, water and vegetation receded until only the Colorado River and a few springs at Las Vegas were left. In 1993 construction workers found remains that turned out to be from a Columbian mammoth that used to wander the area. The bones have been dated to be between eight thousand to fifteen thousand years old. Rafael Rivera is the first non-Native American known to visit the Las Vegas Valley. He discovered spring water and that discovery led to the shortening of the Spanish Trail to Los Angeles. This sped up the rush for the gold in California. “Vegas” was the name the region showed on maps from 1830 to 1848 and was later changed to Las Vegas which translates to “The Meadows.” About fourteen years after Rivera “found” Las Vegas, John C. Fremont led an expedition west and did some camping at the Las Vegas springs in May of 1844. It is John C. Fremont after whom the Fremont Hotel-Casino and Fremont Street (the major thoroughfare of the “old strip”) are named.

In 1855 Mormon settlers started to build a fort (150 square feet large) in order to protect the mail route that extended from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. The fort was built out of adobe. The settlers mined lead (for bullets), cultivated vegetation and planted some fruit trees. They ended up leaving the fort in 1858 but some of the fort has managed to survive and has been declared a historical site” and is located on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Washington Avenue.

By the time 1890 rolled around, railway developers had decided that Las Vegas would be a fantastic location for a town to be built (and for a train depot to be built within that town). The first work to be done on the railroad grade started in 1904. A tent town sprang up that included boarding houses, stores and saloons. Rails were connected to the eastern part of the track later in 1904. The San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad made its first run on January 20, 1905. The rail yards were located at Fremont Street. The Jackie Gaughan’s Plaza Hotel is what now stands on the original site of the Union Pacific depot. It was the railroad that led to Las Vegas’s official founding on May 15, 1905.

Nevada was the first state to make casino-styled gambling legal. First, though, it had to make other types of gambling illegal and became the last state to make other kinds of “gaming” illegal. Their anti-gaming laws were so strict that even using a coin flip to decide a drink price was declared illegal. The Nevada State Journal wrote “Stilled forever is the click of the roulette wheel, the rattle of dice and the swish of cards.” Forever, in Las Vegas it seems, lasts a mere three weeks.

Legalized gambling was put back in place in 1931. It was re-legalized as part of legislation that designated tax profits from gambling to be used in the funding of state-sponsored programs. Currently over 43 percent of the state’s budget comes from gambling taxes. 34 percent of that is used to fund public education. Legalized gambling happened at the same time as Hoover Dam’s construction began.

El Rancho Vegas’s success started a building boom near the end of the 1940s. This building boom included hotel-casinos along a two lane highway that lead into Las Vegas from Los Angeles. That road is now the Las Vegas strip.