Understand Las Vegas

Background reading for the city behind the itinerary — how water and the Mojave made Las Vegas possible, how the Strip was invented as a resort city, how Fremont Street and old downtown came first, and how Red Rock and Mount Charleston frame the desert around it.

Water and the desert Water, the Mojave, and how Las Vegas is possible Las Vegas exists because of water in a place that has almost none. The valley's name means "the meadows," for the grasses fed by desert springs; the railroad put a town here in 1905; and Hoover Dam turned the Colorado River into the power and water that let a resort city grow in the Mojave. Understanding that dependence explains a lot about the modern city. The Strip The Strip as an invented resort city The Las Vegas Strip is not the old downtown, and mostly not even the City of Las Vegas. It grew after 1941 along a highway south of the city limits, in unincorporated Clark County, as a deliberately built resort corridor. Knowing that it was invented — resort by resort, on cheap desert land outside the city — explains why the Strip feels like its own place. Downtown Fremont Street and old downtown Las Vegas Before the Strip there was Fremont Street. Downtown Las Vegas is the original 1905 railroad townsite, where the first hotels, the first paved street, and the first neon signs went up. Today the Fremont Street Experience canopy and the surviving vintage casinos make downtown the place to understand the older, tighter, more walkable Las Vegas. The desert around the city Red Rock, Mount Charleston, and the desert around the city The Strip sits in the middle of a dramatic Mojave landscape most visitors never plan for. Within an hour of the casinos you can reach the red sandstone cliffs of Red Rock Canyon, the alpine forests of Mount Charleston nearly two miles up, and the water and canyons of Lake Mead. The desert is not scenery behind the city — it is a set of distinct day trips.