Las Vegas

Las Vegas, Nevada is a city full of magical lights, right in the middle of the desert.

It’s located in the southern part of Nevada, just across the border from California, Arizona and Utah.

Las Vegas has grown from a small desert railroad stop of 30,500 (?) people in the 1920s to a desert playground of more than one million people.

The center of Las Vegas is designed for tourists. Nearly 30 million tourists visit Las Vegas each year. This is a clean city with many magical places.

That looks like the Eiffel Tower. Is that the Arc de Triomphe?

Dress is casual in Las Vegas, but the weather is very seasonal.

Hotels, hotels, hotels. The biggest hotels in the world are in Las Vegas. There are more than 100,000 hotel rooms in the city. Most of the hotels are beautiful with big lobbies. Many of the hotels have “themes” – there’s the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino with canals like those in Venice, Italy. New York, New York is a small version of the famous city with skyscrapers and even the Statue of Liberty.

The Golden Nugget was one of the first hotel/casinos in Las Vegas. It opened in 1946 as the biggest and brightest spot in Downtown Las Vegas. The Golden Nugget is also famous because of the very large gold nuggets in the lobby. One weighs more than 61 pounds!

Gambling was made legal in 1931 and it quickly became the economic engine for Las Vegas. More than 16 billion dollars are spent each year by the tourist and gamblers who visit the city.

Although the clothing of gamblers today is less formal than it was in these old pictures, the games have not changed very much.

Vegas Vic stands on Fremont Street, at one end of Glitter Gulch in downtown Las Vegas. He is 50 feet tall and has hundreds of neon lights. Most of the action in Las Vegas today takes place on the Strip, not Fremont Street.

Beginning in 1955 the hotels on the Las Vegas Strip got more and more elegant and bigger. The Tropicana and Caesar’s Palace were two of the first hotels with 1000 rooms. The MGM Grand, now Ballys, was the first hotel to have 2000 rooms. Hotels have continued to get bigger. Some hotels have more than 3000 rooms.

Let’s look inside one of the newest hotels, the Bellagio. This hotel has an elegant lobby, 17 restaurants and 3005 guest rooms. It was built to look like Lake Como, a city in the Italian Alps. There is even an 8.5 acre lake.

Las Vegas has become more of a family town. Some hotels feature activities for children. There is an aquarium, dolphins and even white tigers at the Mirage Hotel.

There are also spectacular shows at some hotels. This is the Treasure Island Hotel and show. Each evening the “pirates” perform. Let’s watch the show. Even in Las Vegas everyone cheers for the underdogs!

Let’s get out of the city for a day and take a helicopter ride. First, there’s a good view of the city of Las Vegas from the air. And lots of deserts and mountain scenes on the way to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam. Lake Mead was formed by Hoover Dam. It has 550 miles of shoreline and is a favorite place for boaters.

Hoover Dam was finished in 1935 to hold back the Colorado River. It is the number one tourist spot in Las Vegas. The cement used in the dam would make a two-lane road from New York to San Francisco!

And here it is. One of the most famous sites in the United States – the Grand Canyon. The canyon is 277 miles long, 10 miles wide and up to one mile deep.

The Colorado River formed these beautiful canyons. The Grand Canyon is such a popular tourist site the park has its own airport.

As the sun goes down, the helicopter heads back over the Grand Canyon, Lake Mead and the city of Las Vegas.

Here is one last look at the wonderful nightlife in Las Vegas.

.

Watch Video:

.