From Deseret News archives:
Las Vegas celebrates 100th birthday
City began as a place to house railroad employees
"Las Vegas was a speck in the desert in 1905," Nevada state archivist Guy Rocha said of the town in a bowl-shaped valley rimmed by jagged gray mountains and nourished by a natural spring. The name is Spanish for "the meadows."
"Now there's not a place in the modern world that doesn't recognize Las Vegas," Rocha said. "That's not hype. It is what it is."
American Indians and travelers on the Old Spanish Trail watered at the springs, but the town got its start because the railroad from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles needed a place to house workers.
Today, it's a go-go, 24-hour metropolis of casinos, nightclubs and restaurants that lures 37 million tourists a year. Marquee casinos with dancing fountains and canals sprouted where the springs dried up long ago.
Down the Las Vegas Strip are scale models of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and an Egyptian pyramid. Up the Strip, the curvy Wynn Las Vegas resort opened last month at a cost of $2.7 billion.
Not surprising for this city of excess, there's nothing humble about Las Vegas' celebration of the May 15, 1905, land auction that drew hardy buyers to dusty home sites in what is now downtown.
A birthday cake larger than a basketball court, fireworks, concerts, simultaneous "I Do's" for 100 couples and a resurrected "Helldorado Days" parade are scheduled in and around the town that didn't have a paved road until 1924.
It now has 1.7 million residents and car-choked freeways to funnel residents to work from sprawling suburbs.
"We want the whole world to celebrate with us," said Mayor Oscar Goodman, a former mob lawyer now in his second term.
Drawing attention and people was a lesson learned a century ago from townsfolk artful with hyperbole and unblinking pragmatism.
Skeptical of the 1900 U.S. Census, which put the area population at 30 people, Michael Green, a Community College of Southern Nevada professor, checked residents' signatures.
"They look uncharacteristically alike," said Green, co-author of "Las Vegas: A Centennial History." Many probably worked a ranch owned by Helen Stewart, who sold almost 3 square miles to William Andrews Clark for homesites. Clark, namesake for what is now Clark County, was principal owner of the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad.
More settlers soon came — drawn from Los Angeles and Salt Lake City by cheap land and the promise of train ticket refund if they plunked down as little as $100 on a lot.
