Introducing Las Vegas

Las Vegas  is the largest city in the US state of Nevada. Nicknamed Sin City and the "Entertainment Capital of the World", it is situated in the midst of the southern Nevada desert landscape. The city has giant mega-casino hotels, decorated with lavish care and attention to detail to create a fantasy-like atmosphere. The casinos often have names and themes that evoke romance, mystery, and far-away destinations.

Compared with other cities in the Western US, Las Vegas is a relatively recent arrival. It was founded in 1905, and for many years it was merely a small settlement in the middle of the desert. However, several pivotal events would come together in less than twenty years to make Las Vegas what it is today:

• The construction of Hoover Dam in 1928 brought thousands of workers to the area.
• Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, and what is now downtown Las Vegas became an entertainment center for the dam workers, with casinos and speakeasies.
• In 1941, the luxurious El Rancho Vegas resort opened on what would later become the Las Vegas Strip. Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel later opened the Flamingo Hotel in 1946, starting the building boom and one-upmanship that would continue largely unabated for the next 50 years and creating a precedent of Organized Crime involvement in Nevada's gambling industry that arguably persists.

Climate	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Daily highs F	56	63	69	78	88	99	104	102	94	81	66	57
Nightly lows F	34	38	44	51	60	69	76	74	66	54	42	34
Precipitation in	0.6	0.5	0.5	0.2	0.2	0.1	0.4	0.5	0.3	0.2	0.4	0.4

The city is laid out as follows: Main Street as well as the numbered streets run north-south, starting with Main Street in the west. The bus station is on Main Street. Downtown has several hotels and casinos, as well as the "Fremont Street Experience", a pedestrian mall lined with casinos, near the western end of Fremont Street. South of downtown starts the "Strip" (Las Vegas Boulevard South), a north-south street lined with large casino-hotels. The northern end of the Strip's casino section is marked by the tall Stratosphere tower. Frequent shuttle buses run up and down the Strip and connect the Strip to downtown. The convention center and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) are located east of the Strip, which is where the Las Vegas Monorail runs. The airport is east of the Strip near the southern end.

Welcome!