The strategy hasn’t changed in 70 years: outbuild every other city chasing the same conventions, and let hotel guests cover the bill. Nevada lawmakers started that bet in 1955 with a tax on hotel rooms. The agency they created is still making it, most recently with a $1 billion hall and an underground tunnel system… Continue reading Nevada Lawmakers Created a Room-Tax Board in 1955 to Build a Convention Hall. The Same Agency Just Spent $1 Billion to Keep the Bet Going.

The company that pioneered Las Vegas’s modern mega-resort template no longer owns the resort it built. Las Vegas Sands Corp. sold The Venetian Resort for $6.25 billion in 2022, completing a withdrawal from the Strip that traces back to a hotel financed seven decades earlier by a Texas gambler and a Cleveland casino operator. The… Continue reading Sheldon Adelson’s Group Bought the Sands for $110 Million in 1989. Las Vegas Sands Sold the Resort Built on Its Site for $6.25 Billion in 2022.

Las Vegas chose in 1947 to walk away from the valley’s own groundwater and tie its future permanently to the Colorado River. That single choice, made before Clark County had even formed the agency to carry it out, still decides where every drop of water in the Las Vegas Valley comes from today. Nevada’s Legislature… Continue reading The Las Vegas Valley Water District Bought a Private Water Company for $2.5 Million in 1952. It’s Now One of Seven Agencies Serving More Than 2 Million Southern Nevadans.

Las Vegas Strip casinos increasingly split into two separate businesses: one company owns the ground and buildings, another runs the gambling on top of it. That split did not start with Wall Street real estate trusts. It started when the man who built Caesars Palace sold it to a restaurant company three years after the… Continue reading Jay Sarno Opened Caesars Palace for $24 Million in 1966. A Restaurant Company Bought It for $60 Million Three Years Later.

Las Vegas did not grow into a city and get a street grid afterward. A railroad subsidiary drew the grid first, then sold the city into existence at a two-day tent auction in May 1905 — and the lines it drew that week still mark where downtown Las Vegas begins. William Clark, a U.S. senator… Continue reading The Las Vegas Land and Water Company Auctioned 1,200 Townsite Lots on May 15, 1905. Fremont Street, Platted Days Before It, Still Runs Through Downtown Las Vegas Today.

When the Las Vegas Police Protective Association incorporated in 1947, Nevada law gave it no right to bargain over pay at all. On June 3, 2026, the Nevada Supreme Court decided a dispute that traces directly back to the arbitration power the union didn’t win until decades later — and the ruling turned on who… Continue reading The Las Vegas Police Protective Association Incorporated in 1947, 26 Years Before LVMPD Existed. The Nevada Supreme Court Backed the Arbitration Power It Spent Decades Winning on June 3, 2026.

The Culinary Union’s longtime secretary-treasurer was kidnapped at Las Vegas’s airport in February 1977 and killed three weeks later over an unpaid debt tied to a bombing campaign against non-union restaurants. The union he spent 23 years building didn’t collapse with him. It grew into the political operation that now drives Nevada elections. Culinary Workers… Continue reading Organized-Crime Associates Kidnapped and Killed the Culinary Union’s Secretary-Treasurer in February 1977 Over an Unpaid Bombing Fee. The Union He Built Now Runs Nevada’s Largest Political Operation Instead of Picket Lines.

Southern Nevada’s water agency started tunneling a new intake into the bottom of Lake Mead in 2008, betting that the reservoir would keep falling. It has. The backup pumping station built behind that tunnel is now the only thing standing between the valley’s water supply and a lake that has already swallowed the region’s original… Continue reading The Southern Nevada Water Authority Began Boring Intake No. 3 Under Lake Mead in 2008. The Low Lake Level Pumping Station Built Behind It Is the Only Reason Las Vegas’s Taps Are Still Running Today.

Nevada’s transportation agency walled off F Street with a concrete barrier in 2008, severing the Historic Westside from downtown Las Vegas — a neighborhood the city itself had pushed Black residents into eight decades earlier. The wall came down in 2014, and Las Vegas is still spending to reconnect what it cut off. The city of… Continue reading A 2008 Freeway Project Walled Off F Street, Severing the Historic Westside from Downtown Las Vegas. The City Reopened It in 2014 and Is Still Spending to Reconnect the Neighborhood Today.

Nevada’s gambling regulators froze the Stardust’s gaming licenses in December 1983 after state examiners caught casino employees skimming cash from the count room. The casino that eventually replaced the Stardust on that same stretch of the Strip paid the same regulatory body a $10.5 million fine in March 2025, over a different kind of compliance… Continue reading The Nevada Gaming Commission Fined the Stardust’s Operators $3 Million Over a December 1983 Skimming Probe. It Fined the Casino Now on the Same Site $10.5 Million in 2025.