The largest American city founded in the 20th century took shape as a railroad watering hole before turning into the gateway to the Hoover Dam.

In the mid-19th century members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormons, settled to farm in the Las Vegas Valley. Three years later the Mormon settlers abandoned Las Vegas and returned soon after Nevada became the 36th state in the Union in 1864.
The next settlers rode trains in Las Vegas, and became a convenient watering stop between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

In 1905 to stimulate the area, 600 lots were sold and that’s how Las Vegas was born, shortly after in 1909 Nevada banned gambling. Las Vegas incorporated as a city on March 16, 1911.
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Nevada became a U.S. state on October 31, 1864 as the 36th state. The state takes its name from the Spanish nevada (“snow-clad”), a reference to the high mountain scenery of the Sierra Nevada on the western border with California. The U.S. obtained the region in 1848 following the Mexican War, and the first permanent settlement was a Mormon trading post near present-day Genoa. Nevada was made famous by the 1859 discovery of the Comstock Lode, the richest known U.S. silver deposit

In 1950, during the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the USSR, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission chose a Nevada site to test nuclear weapons in the 1950s, bringing additional jobs and prosperity to southern Nevada.
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