Las Vegas

With almost 40 million visitors a year, Las Vegas, Nevada, is widely recognized as “The Entertainment Capital of the World.” Flashy, ostentatious, and wonderfully fun, this city’s most notable claim to fame is its mega-resorts and casinos, where each casino tries to outdo the next. You can witness jousting knights after gambling at Excalibur; ride a 203-foot roller coaster at New York, New York; ride a gondola through the Venetian, or take in the nightly buccaneer fight at Treasure Island. Here, almost anything imaginable has been brought to life, but for a city best-known for its casino gambling and a booming tourism industry, Las Vegas is a city that is, surprisingly, also home to an abundance of other attractions.

In addition to its mega-casinos, infamous and extravagant stage shows and opulent hotel accommodations, you’ll find world-class art galleries, both large and small, that display original masterpieces by artists such as Matisse, Van Gogh, Ce’zanne, Warhol, and Picasso. The first joint venture between the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation—The Guggenheim Heritage—is here, as are notable galleries, such as The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art and The Wynn Collection. Additionally, Las Vegas is home to more than two dozen museums, including The Hoover Dam Museum, The Thunderbird Museum, The Barrick Natural History Museum and The Lied Discovery Children’s Museum, just to name a few. You’ll also discover an overabundance of delectable cuisine and unique shopping experiences, including The World Market Center, home of the some of the nation’s best wholesale furniture shopping. And for the outdoor lover? The area offers a wealth of options—hiking in Red Rock Canyon, skiing and snowboarding on Mt. Charleston, water sports on Lake Mead, and more than forty—yes, forty—golf courses all nearby.

Spanish for “The Meadows,” Las Vegas originally got its name from Spaniard explorers who followed the Old Spanish Trail here from Texas in the 1800’s. These explorers would stop to use the water flowing from the area’s artesian wells. Later, in 1905, the city was established as a railroad town and served as a staging point for surrounding mines. Las Vegas officially became a city in 1911 and is now known as the largest city founded in the 20th century. With gambling legalized in 1931 and The Hoover Dam completed in 1936, tourism flourished. Then when Bugsy Seigel opened his famous Flamingo Hotel in 1946, he unwittingly established what later would become the famed Las Vegas Strip. The Mirage, The Strip’s first megaresort, opened in 1989, and now this 4 ½ mile avenue is home to two dozen of the grandest, most legendary casinos in the world. The rest, it seems, is Las Vegas history.