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Las Vegas means 'the meadows' and referred to an area of grazing land fed by a spring. It was once used by the Paiute Indians and later by a Mexican scout Rafael Rivera in 1829. It served as useful stopping off point for travelers on their way to California. In the 1850s, some Mormons built a small mission and a fort. Later the land was bought by a railway company and became a railroad town with hotels and ice works. The building of the immense Hoover Dam helped absorb many of the workers laid off by the railroad during the Great Depression in the twenties. The Hoover Dam provided water and power for the emerging city. So far Las Vegas developed like a number of U.S. cities but it was a decision in 1931 that began to send Las Vegas into a whole new direction. In 1931 Nevada legalized gambling and simplified divorce laws. This led to the construction of the cities first big casino - El Rancho by developers, followed by casinos financed by mobsters such as Bugsy Siegal. These mobsters taste set the tone for the Las Vega we know today- big brash and cheesy. Vegas maintains its gambling business but has reinvented itself as a family resort and convention centre- as it keeps an eye on potential competitors such as Atlantic City that also now permits gambling. Vegas contains 19 of the world's 20 largest hotels. Each hotel delights in providing family-friendly theme parks- each idea more outlandish and bigger than the next. Visitors can pop into the King Tut's Tomb, stay at a hotel shaped like a pyramid (with a Spynx outside of course) sky dive, attend a Star Trek convention (Vegas is becoming the convention capital of the US), eat in the replica Eiffel tower, view a fake volcano and take a trip to one of the biggest holes in the ground - the Grand Canyon. Vegas is a city that makes no apology for its brashness, its neon signs and Venetian canals- it's a 24 hour merry-go-round that's visited by over 30 million people a year. It's a city where you leave good taste at home and go along for the ride, and of course, if you like Elvis, so much the better. |