I am in Las Vegas at the moment. My job sends me to Las Vegas about once a year and it is never a trip I particularly look forward to. Like most Northern Nevadans, to call my relationship with Sin City “Love-Hate” would be to imply the existence of the former. Still, it does nobody any good to go around disparaging other people, and so after many years of yammering on to anyone who would listen about how much I despised the place, that was finally out of my system and thankfully, it was time for me to begin to contemplate what it is about Las Vegas that makes the place what it is.
A general hypothesis along these lines has been forming inside my brain this trip and it is composed of several milestones that represent key principles in place in Las Vegas that, for the purposes of this blog at least, can be used to cast light on the dichotomy between Clark County’s way and the rest of Nevada’s way. They are: 1. Las Vegas is a fundamentally 20th Century City, 2. which was the nearest whistlestop to Hoover Dam, 3. which began to benefit tremendously economically from the water and power Hoover Dam provided, 4. which really enjoyed success once it got a taste of it, and 5. which was willing to do anything it would take from that point on to continue to be successful, including being downwind of above ground nuclear testing and using whoever’s money would fund the thing to build casinos the likes of which the world had never seen.
Everywhere one goes in Las Vegas one is reminded of the fact that Las Vegas is a fundamentally 20th century city. I have looked long and hard for any evidence that horse-drawn carriages ever plied the streets of Las Vegas. It appears almost impossible to find this evidence. Of course we know horse-drawn carriages did once ply the streets of Las Vegas. But the urban environment, the fabric of Las Vegas was so comprehensively adapted to automobiles that today wherever one casts one’s gaze one feels as if looking across a highway or a parking lot. Sidewalks are 3 feet wide in probably greater than 90% of the city, a city which by and large isn’t really the city of its own name but which is unincorporated territory outside of the political influence of the namesake city.
When Hoover Dam came around, the real deal of the 20th century attitude was embodied in concrete and steel that harnessed the power and water of a mighty river to provide both for an entire region which would otherwise not be able to sustain large populations at all. The real deal of the 20th century attitude is that man’s power over nature through the imposition of technology can produce for man whatever man requires. This had always been an aspect of the human condition, of course. But in the 20th century it became possible for the first time to mobilize such large quantities of materials and labor as to create projects like Hoover Dam.
The power and water that the dam generated were first employed in the processing of magnesium, an enterprise which created 15,000 jobs. The power and water of the Hoover Dam, combined with the large size of the Las Vegas Valley, must have been an intoxicating mix to those early enterprising individuals who would build the city.
Success tastes good. When the Army Air Corps established Nellis Air Force Base in 1942, a pattern which had begun with the construction of Hoover Dam was well established for a way Las Vegas could get that success: other people’s money. In the case of these early projects, it was the federal government’s money, to be precise. Las Vegas celebrated its willingness to do what it takes to secure prosperity from outside investment, and so nuclear bombs were detonated in the desert north of town for 12 years.
During this time when Las Vegas was learning this pattern, men of vision who had been criminals wherever they tried to ply the trade of running games of chance found they could run legitimate businesses in Nevada (or, during the early years, at least not be criminals) Where in Reno they would find a civic culture aimed at restricting what was considered a necessary evil, which constantly confounded the ability for these men to realize their visions, in Las Vegas they would find cheap land and an extremely willing local population. It didn’t matter where the money was coming from. And history has been kind to that attitude, as the mob gave way to corporate operators and even today cranes loom on the skyline as an incredible number of vertical mega-projects take form.
This devil-may-care attitude toward the actions required in the service of prosperity is the defining characteristic of Las Vegas, and the side effects of this attitude in a material, spiritual and intellectual sense are the lessons of Las Vegas. It has served the city well. At this time of economic uncertainty the question most prominent in my mind: Is Las Vegas at a turning point? Having reached its current size is growth to level off here, and new 21st century patterns to be established? I’ll be watching to see.
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