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The ranking comes on the heels of a recent article in Money Magazine that ranked Las Vegas as the No. 1 best place to live in America. The magazine also highlighted downtown Las Vegas, Summerlin and Boulder City as the best places to live in the Las Vegas Valley.
Las Vegas Population Facts:
The state of Nevada has 1.85 million residents; 1.2 million of them live in Clark County (which includes Las Vegas, Boulder City, Henderson, Mesquite and North Las Vegas).
Las Vegas Climate Facts:
There are 131 days a year when the temperature tops 90 degrees and thirty-three days a year when the temp's fall below freezing. The annual average temperature is 66 degrees with very low humidity levels.
Las Vegas Geography Facts:
You may not be aware that Las Vegas is a part of the high desert that is rimmed on all sides by colorful mountains, Mount Charleston being the tallest at 11,912 feet.
Las Vegas Schools Facts:
The Clark County School District employs 20,000 and operates 227 schools that educate 239,064 students. The commitment to education by voters has allowed 3.5 billion to finance the area’s educational needs through the year 2008. In addition there are 26 private schools that have enrollment of 9186.
Las Vegas Activities Facts:
Las Vegas is home to many sporting and cultural events. There is everything from NASCAR racing and boxing to rodeos and baseball. There are many celebrations of the arts and cultural fairs and festivals as well as 16 museums. There is the ballet and symphony. As well as some of the finest Hotel/Casinos in the world!
Nevada was the first state to legalize casino-style gambling, but not before it reluctantly was the last western state to outlaw gaming in the first decade of the 20th Century.
At midnight, Oct. 1, 1910, a strict anti-gambling law became effective in Nevada. It even forbid the western custom of flipping a coin for the price of a drink. The Nevada State Journal newspaper in Reno reported: "Stilled forever is the click of the roulette wheel, the rattle of dice and the swish of cards."
"Forever" lasted less than three weeks in Las Vegas. Gamblers quickly set up underground games where patrons who knew the proper password again jousted day and night with Lady Luck. Illegal but accepted gambling flourished until 1931 when the Nevada Legislature approved a legalized gambling bill authored by Phil Tobin, a Northern Nevada rancher. Tobin had never visited Las Vegas and had no interest in gambling. He said the legalized gambling legislation was designed to raise needed taxes for public schools. Today, more than 43 percent of the state general fund is fed by gambling tax revenue and more than 34 percent of the state's general fund is pumped into public education.
Legalized gambling returned to Nevada during the Great Depression. It legitimized a small but lucrative industry. That same year construction started on the Hoover Dam Project which, at its peak, employed 5,128 people. The young town of Las Vegas virtually was insulated from economic hardships that wracked most Americans in the 1930s. Jobs and money were prevalent because of Union Pacific Railroad development, legal gambling and construction of Hoover Dam 34 miles away in Black Canyon on the Colorado River.
World War II stalled major resort growth in Las Vegas. But the seeds for future expansion had been planted in 1941 when hotelman Tommy Hull built the El Rancho Vegas Hotel-Casino on what is now vacant land opposite the current Sahara Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. During World War II, nearby Nellis Air Force Base grew into a key military installation. Originally built to train B-29 gunners, it later became the training ground for the nation's ace fighter pilots. Many key military personnel assigned to Nellis during World War II later returned as civilians to take up permanent residency in Las Vegas. Today thousands of people are connected to Nellis in the form of active duty personnel, civilian employees, military dependents and military retirees.
The success of the El Rancho Vegas triggered a small building boom in the late 1940s including construction of several hotel- casinos fronting on a two-lane highway leading into Las Vegas from Los Angeles. The stretch of road evolved into today's Las Vegas Strip. Early hotels included the Last Frontier, Thunderbird and Club Bingo. The El Rancho Vegas was razed by fire on June 17, 1960. As time passed, many other first-generation Strip resorts lost their identity through absorption by new owners, demolition, extensive renovation and name changes.
By far the most celebrated of the early resorts was the Flamingo Hotel, built by mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, a member of the Meyer Lansky crime organization. The Flamingo with a giant pink neon sign and replicas of pink flamingos on the lawn, opened on New Year's Eve 1946. Six months later, Siegel was murdered by an unknown gunman who fired a shotgun blast as Siegel sat in the living room of the Beverly Hills, Calif., home of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill. Siegel's life was the subject of a 1992 movie entitled "Bugsy." Although the historic accuracy of the movie is questionable, the movie prompted the Flamingo to open the "Bugsy Celebrity Theater" in November 1992. The Flamingo, after numerous ownership changes, is now owned and operated by the Hilton Hotel Group. Its proper name is the Flamingo Hilton.
While the El Rancho Vegas and other 1940s resorts followed a western ranch-styled theme, the Flamingo was what Siegel called a "carpet joint." It was modeled after resort hotels in Miami. Only the Flamingo Hotel name has survived the 1940s era of Las Vegas Strip development. The final end of the Flamingo as Bugsy knew it was announced early in 1993 when Hilton Corp. revealed plans to construct a $104 million tower addition at the Strip resort -- the last of a six tower master plan. The addition opened in the spring of 1995.
Architectural plans included razing the outmoded, motel-style buildings at the rear of the property, dooming the fortress-like "Bugsy Suite" and bullet proof office used by the gangster before his death in 1946. In December 1993, the last remnants of Bugsy Siegel and his residence were destroyed when the hotel bulldozed the Oregon Building that held the suite in which the gangster once lived.
Resort building continued to accelerate in Las Vegas in the 1950s. Wilbur Clark, once a hotel bellman in San Diego, Calif., opened the Desert Inn in 1950. Two years later, Milton Prell opened the Sahara Hotel on the site of the old Club Bingo. The Sands Hotel opened that same year, 1952. Those hotel names have survived but the properties have undergone numerous ownership changes.
In 1955, the Riviera Hotel became the first Strip highrise in at nine stories. Previously, Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn had offered guests the highest unobstructed panoramic view of the Las Vegas Valley from the resort's third-floor Skyroom, a cocktail and dancing haunt of visitors, residents and celebrities.
Other resorts that opened during the building boom begun in the 1950s included the Royal Nevada, Dunes, Hacienda, Tropicana and Stardust hotels on the Strip and the Downtown Fremont Hotel-Casino. The Royal Nevada later was absorbed into the adjoining Stardust Hotel property.
In another part of the city, the Moulin Rouge Hotel-Casino opened in 1955 at a time when blacks were not welcomed guests at Strip casinos and black entertainers were required to live off- premise while entertaining Strip audiences. The Moulin Rouge, frequented by all races, was built to accommodate the growing black population. Joe Louis, the late heavyweight champion of the world, was a Moulin Rouge owner-host. The Moulin Rouge has had a stormy past, closing and re-opening many times over the years. As times and attitudes changed, Louis became a much loved casino host at Caesars Palace on the Strip. The Moulin Rouge was declared a national historic site in 1992 when plans for its revival were announced.
City and county community leaders also realized in the 1950s the need for a Las Vegas convention facility. The initial goal was to fill hotel rooms with conventioneers during slack tourist months. A site was chosen one block east of the Las Vegas Strip and a 6,300-seat, silver-domed rotunda with an adjoining 90,000-square- foot exhibit hall opened in April 1959 on the site of the current Las Vegas Convention Center.
The silver dome was demolished in 1990 to make room for convention center expansion to a 1.6-million-square-foot facility of which 1.3 million square feet is exhibit space. It is currently one of the largest single-level facilities in the world. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, supported mainly by room tax revenues, today is a major player in attracting more than 28.2 million visitors to Las Vegas in 1994, including more than 2 million convention delegates.
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In 1976, when casino-style gaming was legalized in Atlantic City, N.J., it became apparent to Las Vegas casino owners that Nevada no longer could claim exclusive rights to gambling casinos. It perhaps hastened the beginning of another era for the Strip -- the megaresort.
Circus Circus Enterprises Inc., in October 1968 already had opened a circus-tent-shaped casino complete with midway games and rides for youngsters. A hotel was added in 1972. Owners of the resort have developed a $90 million water theme park called Grand Slam Canyon on five acres adjoining the Circus Circus Hotel-Casino.
The entertainment park, a takeoff on the Grand Canyon, includes 140-foot mountains, a 90-foot Havasupai Falls, and a coursing river where the adventuresome can assault river rapids, plunge over a 50-foot waterfall, fly through the canyon and caverns in a double-loop, cork-screw roller coaster or lounge on beach- rimmed, lagoon-like pools. Grand Slam Canyon, which opened Aug. 23, 1993, is climate- controlled and enclosed by a vented pink space-frame dome.
The 3,049-room Mirage Hotel-Casino opened in the fall of 1989 at a construction cost of $630 million. It features a white tiger habitat, a dolphin pool, an elaborate swimming pool and waterfall and a man-made volcano that belches fire and water. Mirage owner Steve Wynn, who also owns the Golden Nugget Hotel-Casino in Downtown Las Vegas, constructed the 2,900-room Treasure Island adjacent to The Mirage at a cost of $430 million. The hotel features Buccaneer Bay where a full scale pirate ship and British frigate engage in a battle of cannon fire. In the end, the pirates blast the British and the frigate slowly sinks beneath the churning waves.
With Treasure Island, which opened Oct. 27, 1993, and the Mirage side by side on the Las Vegas Strip, Wynn has nearly 6,000 rooms on a 100-acre site. Additionally, Wynn purchased the 164-acre Dunes Hotel and Country Club on the Las Vegas Strip for $75 million in 1992. He spent $1 million renovating the country club on the golf course. In October 1993, the flamboyant casino owner staged a $1.5 million spectacular in which the north tower of the Dunes Hotel was imploded and the famous Dunes Hotel sign destroyed amid a shower of fireworks. More than 200,000 people crowded onto the Strip to witness the spectacular.
The Excalibur, a 4,000-room colossus, opened June 19, 1990. The imaginative medieval "castle" was developed by Circus Circus Enterprises Inc. for between $260 and $290 million. Some floors are devoted solely to non-gambling entertainment for children and the young at heart. Court jesters perform in public areas. The showroom features jousting on horseback by knights of King Arthur's court. William Bennett, founder of Circus Circus Enterprises Inc., constructed the 2,526-room, pyramid-shaped Luxor a quarter mile south of the Excalibur.
The Luxor, a modern marvel which cost $375 million dollars to build, is linked to the Excalibur by monorail. The Luxor features a full-scale reproduction of King Tut's Tomb. The world's most powerful beam of light shines from the top of the pyramid. It is visible to planes 250 miles away in Los Angeles. The atrium in the middle of the pyramid could hold nine Boeing 747s stacked one atop of another.
The MGM Grand Hotel & Theme Park is a $1 billion, 112-acre resort hotel, casino and theme park highlights the MGM Hollywood image. With the 33-acre theme park as the center piece, the 5,005-room hotel boasts a 171,500-square-foot casino, 12 theme restaurants, a 1,700-seat production showroom, a 630-seat production theater, three swimming pools, five tennis courts, a child care center and a 215,000-square-foot, 15,200-seat special events arena for concerts, sporting events and exhibitions. The MGM Grand Hotel and Theme Park opened Dec. 18, 1993.
Some of the above information provided by the Las Vegas News Bureau.
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