Las Vegas in the Mojave Desert of the US state of Nevada is a popular tourist destination known for its lively nightlife with casinos and other entertainment open around the clock. The main street and lifeline of the city is the almost 6.5 km long so-called Strip. Along this boulevard are numerous themed hotels with unusual design elements such as musical fountains or replicas of an Egyptian pyramid, the Grand Canal in Venice or the Eiffel Tower.
Las Vegas is located in the middle of the Mojave Desert and is best known for its casinos and numerous shows. It is also a site for world-renowned trade shows and conventions, as well as a popular conference venue. Las Vegas is supplied with water and electricity by the nearby Hoover Dam, which dams the Colorado River. Before the opening of the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas was just a small railroad station in the desert. In 1931, gambling was legalized in Nevada, turning the formerly small desert settlement into a metropolis that is still growing after enormous growth rates in the second half of the 20th century. In the 1950s and the 1960s, Las Vegas became a money laundering facility for the Chicago mafia. In recent decades, Las Vegas has increasingly tried to move away from the image of a pure gambling town, with the goal of building a more family-friendly image. Las Vegas, compared to other cities in the U.S., lacks older buildings. Buildings that are 100 years old or more are few and far between. As a result, the city lacks some of the historic charm of other cities in the Southwest, but on the other hand, the lively metropolis, brightly lit at night, has its own unique charm thanks to its futuristic casino buildings on the Strip.
The Strip is increasingly characterized by modern high-rise buildings
The first Las Vegas casinos were not built on the Strip, but in Downtown Las Vegas. In the meantime, however, the Strip of Las Vegas, which lies about 6 kilometers south of downtown and actually for the most part on the territory of the city of Paradise, has become the main attraction of the gambling city. Some casinos that still exist today were built in downtown Las Vegas in the 1940s. Parts of Downtown Las Vegas appear somewhat uninvigorated with their wasteland and abandoned motels, but politicians are now trying to counteract this. Nevertheless, Downtown is the center of Las Vegas’ subculture and artists with street art and lots of graffiti. In particular, the area around Fremont Street is the preferred nightlife spot for locals, who often avoid the tourist-heavy Strip.
Outside of the lively center around the Strip and Downtown, Las Vegas is primarily characterized by decades of suburbanization, so that the metropolis now extends over almost the entire basin of the Las Vegas Valley. The entire Clark County metropolitan region is home to approximately (as of 2018) 2.2 million people, or nearly three-quarters of all Nevada residents. As a globally important tourist center, Las Vegas attracts about 42 million visitors annually (as of 2018).