Canyon petro glyphs confirm to human presence in southern Nevada for more than 10,000 years, and members of the Paiute tribe were in the area as early on as A.D. 700. The first person of European descent to enter the Las Vegas valley was Rafael Rivera, who scouted the area in 1821 as part of Antonio Armijo's expedition to open up a trade direction the Old Spanish Trail between New Mexico and California. Rivera named the valley Las Vegas, "the grazing land," after its spring-watered grasses.
Little changed in the valley subsequent the 1848 shift from Mexican to United States rule until 1855, when Brigham Young sent a group of Mormon colonizer to the area. From the 1940s onward Las Vegas liked a military boom as World War II bases gave way to Cold War amenities, most legendary the Nevada Test Site, where over 100 nuclear bombs were detonated above position between 1951 and 1963.
In 1966 Howard Hughes checkered into the penthouse of the Desert Inn and never left, rather to buy the hotel rather than face expulsion. He bought other hotels to $300 million worth conduct in an era in which mob interests were relocate by business conglomerates.
Mushroom vapors were often noticeable from the hotels on the slip, and postcards proclaimed Las Vegas the "Up and Atom City." In 1989 longtime casino developer Steve Wynn unlock the illusion, the city's first mega-resort.
Over the next two decades the strip was distorted yet again: Old casinos were explode to make room for huge complexes taking their aesthetic cues from antique Rome and Egypt, Paris, Venice, Washington and other glamorous run away.
