With its casinos and hotels, sparkling Las Vegas is one of the most recognisable metropolises on the planet, attracting thousands of tourists, roulette fans and ‘one-armed bandits’ from all over the world every year.
Unceasing noise, rivers of champagne and car parks, where sometimes you can’t even put your finger between two luxury cars, make you forget that a hundred years ago there was nothing – or almost nothing – in the place of Las Vegas. In this article we will tell you about the history of this unique city. And let’s start with the origins.
An Indian settlement on the road to the West
For one and a half thousand years in these lands lived representatives of the Paiute tribe. The first foreigner who came to this part of Nevada was a member of the Mexican expedition Armijo Rafael Rivera – his goal was to explore the way from New Mexico to California. The route was discovered, called the Old Spanish Trail, and one of the locations along the way was a land called Las Vegas, which means ‘meadows’ in Cervantes’ language.
Up until the war of 1848, the land was under the authority of the government in Mexico City and was of little interest to settlers (it must be said that the situation did not change much afterwards). This continued until 1855, when the Mormons came to these places: representatives of the sect built a small fort here, but soon left, having failed to gain a foothold in the inhospitable land.
They were succeeded by Octavius Gass, a goldsmith. He decided to establish a mission here, and Las Vegas became a full-fledged city in 1905 – however, only on paper, in fact it was a hub station, where goods trains changed locomotives and replenished coal reserves. The railway was a key landowner in the town, and when it began to decline, it sold 45 hectares in the centre of town for a pittance. It was then that the first casinos sprang up here, attracting migrants from eastern states to California, Nevada and other Pacific Coast states. These establishments were illegal, and therefore the enterprise was also bound to decline over time, but in 1931, local lawmakers decided to take things up and change everything.
Legalisation as a stimulus for development
In this year, two events took place that determined the fate of the city:
- The local legislature decided to legalise gambling.
- Hoover Dam construction began near the city; tens of thousands of workers were working on the construction of this impressive object, and all of them needed somewhere to live, something to eat and somehow spend their earnings.
The first thing the city authorities decided to do was to help with the latter. The only paved street was overgrown with the teeth of new casinos, brothels and saloons in a matter of months. In 1936, the station was finally built – and Las Vegas sparkled with hundreds of lights, beckoning lovers of easy profits and confident in their luck from all over America. In 1941 El Rancho Vegas and Last Frontier opened their doors, followed by other establishments.
Most of them were either under the protection of mafia clans, or opened on their direct order.
All this served as a powerful magnet for people: if in 1940 in Vegas there were just over forty thousand residents, then in 1960 their number reached 100 thousand, and in 1995 passed over a million. In 2020, the urban population exceeded 2.2 million people (however, only 650 thousand of them are residents of Vegas itself, the rest come here to work from neighbouring towns and villages). Over 50 million tourists from the U.S. and dozens of other countries every year visit the casinos and attractions of the city.
The heyday of Las Vegas mega-casinos
De facto, all of the next hundred years of the city’s history is the life of casinos, hotels, and restaurants, which turned into the main, in fact, the only driver of urban development.
With one small but rather significant exception—when a nuclear test site was opened in this part of Nevada. Between 1951 and 1963, over a hundred nuclear above-ground and underground tests were conducted near Las Vegas. Often, they could be observed right from the city streets, so much so that newspapers and guidebooks even called this city “Atom City.” Despite the not-so-healthy consequences of ionizing radiation, Vegas’ fame as the gambling capital of the West was not affected—tourists simply saw the occasional nuclear mushrooms and explosions blossoming on the horizon as another game of chance!
And then another event happened: in 1966, billionaire Howard Hughes moved into one of the penthouses of a local hotel. Then he bought the whole hotel, followed by others, and that’s how multinational corporations and property developers took the place of the mafia that once ruled the city. The mafia was finally defeated in the late ’80s, and in 1989, on land that had long been controlled by criminal syndicates, a mega-casino—Mirage—was built. Its opening was an important milestone in the city’s history, as small casinos of dozens and even hundreds of owners were replaced by impressive complexes with hundreds of roulettes and thousands of machines.
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All these years, old casinos owned by clans were simply blown up to clear space for new developments. For Americans, with their penchant for spectacle, it was just another great show.
A nightmare for architects and spatial designers.
In any case, Vegas is a very young city. On the one hand, this is a good thing: no historical buildings, and therefore no outdated infrastructure. On the other hand, it means that there are no restrictions on development.
The key industry of the city’s economy is casinos, so everything is based on them – hotels, public spaces and residential buildings.
That’s why the dull grey cubes of apartment buildings stand on the sidelines, and the city centre is an eclectic mishmash of car parks, casinos, hotels, mixed with a giant ‘Exosphere’ – a 55,000 sqm sphere worth over two billion US dollars. Or the miniature (though not so miniature – over 30 metres high!) Eiffel Tower. And these are just two illustrative, but not unique examples – the whole city is like this. A city that grew out of sand, mud, playing cards and a few roulette chips – and at the same time one of the world’s most famous metropolises.
Conclusion
Las Vegas is a city unlike any other—a testament to human ambition, reinvention, and the sheer power of entertainment. What began as an unremarkable desert outpost has transformed into a glittering metropolis, where fortunes are won and lost under a canopy of neon lights. From its early days as a humble railroad stop to its rise as the gambling capital of the world, Vegas has thrived on its ability to adapt, attracting dreamers, risk-takers, and visionaries who shaped its destiny.
The legalization of gambling, the construction of the Hoover Dam, and the relentless expansion of mega-casinos turned Las Vegas into a global icon, drawing millions of visitors every year. Whether it was the influence of the mob in the mid-20th century or the corporate takeover that followed, the city has never stopped evolving. Today, it stands as a paradox—a place of both fantasy and reality, where architectural wonders coexist with the raw pursuit of luck and wealth.
Yet, beyond the flashing lights and extravagant spectacles, Las Vegas remains a symbol of what is possible when innovation meets opportunity. It is a city built on sand but held together by the dreams of those who walk its famous Strip, hoping that maybe—just maybe—the next roll of the dice will change everything.
