Las Vegas means "the meadows". There were once natural springs there, but
it was on the best route for a railroad to Los Angeles, so they were
co-opted, and pumped nearly dry. Now all one sees of "Las Vegas" is a
dreary, dry, vacant lot with pumps among the weeds. It is a fitting
metaphor for the city. 

I went to Las Vegas for three days last week, to give a seminar and attend
a board meeting. I saw slots in the airport, but never saw the inside of a
casino, so I did not see what most visitors to Las Vegas go there to do.
There are also more interesting things to do in the region. These are a
few observations of such. 

Flying into Las Vegas, and driving from the airport - at night - one sees
the "strip" of outrageous buildings illuminated in garish colors amidst
flashing signs. In daytime, the light is the sun, which in the Southwest
is all powerful: the tinsel glitter of the strip lies bare in glare,
immersed in smog and haze, amidst a maze of traffic glutted streets. Las
Vegas is the fastest growing city in the country, now topping one million
residents, and growing at 1,600 per month.  Water is rare (the meadows
having been exhausted long ago) and is mostly pumped from Lake Mead, which
is where the waste water is sent - upstream of the intakes - for a few
moments in the sun. 

I spent Friday at the Desert Research Institute, whose primary new project
concerns water supply in Ghana, and Saturday at the board meeting, which
was disposed of fast enough, under a grapevine ladden trellis. On Sunday
we went on a tour of the region, and got the best views of Las Vegas - from
outside. 

We went 90 miles northwest, up the Wash, and south over a limb of the
Spring Mountains to Ash Meadows. Ash Meadows - "Ash Vegas"? - has springs
and meadows. It also has water, at least 24 plants and animals found
nowhere else in the world, and four fishes and one plant currently listed
as endangered. The valley is not a route to anywhere, so what happened to
the Las Vegas meadows came later to Ash Meadows in the form of alfalfa
farms pumping the springs and drying them up, extinguishing species.  Las
Vegas probably also had a suite of -different - rare plants and animals,
of which we will never know anything. However by the time development came
to Ash Meadows, so did The Nature Conservancy, and the knowledge and
interest of the ecological community, from which came a National Wildlife
Refuge. A damaged one, to be sure, but the introduced saltcedar trees and
crayfish are being removed, and the habitats restored. The lost species
will never be. One surviving species, the Devil's Hole Pupfish, is found
only in a water filled sinkhole, perhaps 20 by 60 feet - and of unknown
depth - where the entire population of a few hundred fish have lived their
lives since being trapped there by the desertification of the Southwest
following the last glaciation. 

From Ash Meadows we returned to Las Vegas via Pahrump, over which hovers
12,000 foot Mt. Charleston, providing nearly 10,000 feet of relief.
Distances and heights are deceptive. Mt. Charleston lay 15 miles away but
looked nearer. The Nopha and Kingston ranges were visible 20 and 40 miles
away to the south. We crossed the Spring Mountains again at Mountain
Springs (!), a small hamlet at the pass, and turned into Red Rock Canyon,
where the 400,000,000 year old paleozoic limestones can clearly be seen
atop the 200,000,000 year old Jurassic sandstones, with their brilliant
ferric blaze of red. 

Heading east from there, one tops a rise, and there before one lies all of
Las Vegas, under a grimy cloud of dust and dirt, lying flat and
diminuative in the Wash, 20 miles away. It was tempting to think of the
whole dirty mess being again submerged in the absent glacial lakes, like
an Atlantis of human vainglory and greed. 

Leaving those dry and dreary "meadows", we swung north, up to the Valley
of Fire, which were framed by the grey Paleozoic rising from the south and
the brilliant Jurassic keeping guard to the north. The valley was much
traveled by native Americans, and carved upon the desert varnish upon the
sandstones are those images of their thoughts that they chose to leave to
be seen after they were long gone: antelope, turtles, atlatls, suns and
serpents..and, who knows what they are? 

The Valley of Fire descends to Lake Mead, but now it was time to end the
day, so the shimmering lake, the slack backwater of supposed progress, lay
to our east as we skirted the enclosing mountain walls. There are springs
along there too, surrounded by parking lots and sun shelters with picnic
tables - and a sign saying not to get any water from the cool, enticing,
spring pond into your nose, as there is present an amoeba, which kills. 
The desert can bite in many ways. 

Topping the last rise near sunset, the view is 5000 feet down into Las
Vegas. The latest monstrosity is dead ahead - an over 1000 foot tall tower
with a twenty-story hotel and casino on top, under construction but nearly
finished, jutting up from the murk, but diminutive so many thousands of
feet below and miles away. The sun sets, and the tinsel and glitter comes
out of its burrows, and the city mocks its inhabitants. 

12 responses total.

  Sounds wonderful.

  According to what I have read, slots at the airport, and other places other
than the casinos, are reputed to have the worst payoff rates in the state
because there is hardly any repeat traffic. Better not to play the slots at
all.

  I'd love to see Lake Mead and Hoover Dam and the Wash. Sounds wonderful.

Rane, great article - Thank you.

As I have posted before, I have never had a sinle desire to go to Las Vegas.
 Your posting made it more interesting for the first time.  I have no interest
in the casinos, or the lavish shows or the garish nightlife.  But the trip
to Ash meadows sounds lovely and Lake Mead very appealing for all the things
we like to do.  In the past, I would have avoided a trip there even if it was
given to me as a gift.  Your postin opened my eyes to the potential of the
area for Jerry and I.  Many thanks.

I just returned from Las Vegas, it was the final stop after a spectacular tour
of the National Parks in the Southwest. As a New Yorker I was not overwhelmed
by the gaudy displays, but I was amazed. Vegas is also a city that never
sleeps. There are no locks on the doors of the casinos, why bother? At 4AM
the casinos were as busy as ever. The shows were terrific. Despite the
attempts to make it a family town, Vegas remains a playland for adults. 

An interesting fact about Las Vegas is that it is two cities, Las Vegas
and North Las Vegas, each with its own city government. I did not learn
the origin of this, but I suspect it was related to the development of the
west along railroads, where the railroads were ceded alternate square
miles of land on each side of the tracks. They could control development
(and make lots of money) by selling those lands selectively. Those that
could not afford the railroad prices would squat on adjacent public lands
and eventually form their own towns. North Las Vegas is mostly poor and
run down, the descendents (and immigrants) of those that could not play in
the high-finance Las Vegas market. 

I recommend that you pick up acopy of "Las Vegas" by Deke Castleman if you
want to know more about the history and development of Vegas. Its more than
just a tour book, it's great fun. Also the description of Circus-Circus in
"Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" is right on target. I also underrstand that
"Green Felt Jungle" has a lot of good history but I can't get a copy of this
out of print book for love or money.

You are right - I really should get some facts.

Hey Beavis, was that last response sarcastic?

_House of Cards - Las Vegas: Too many people in the wrong place,
celebrating waste as a way of life_ Mike Davis, Sierra (The magazine of
the Sierra Club), November/December 1995, pp 36-41. 

"The hydro-fetishism of the Strip is only the most blatant example of Las
Vega' stubborn regusal to accept the environmental constraints of living
in a desert."

"Las Vegas confirms Edwsard Abbey's worst nightmares about an apocalyptic
urbanism in the Southwest."

"Las Vegas is a decentralized and artifically waterlogged 'post-suburban
metropolis', blindly strewing population growth and urban functions across
the desert with all the logic of a plane wreck."

..all because of a need for (cough cough) flood control on the Columbia
River and cotton (cotton?) in the San Fernando, while new L.A. became
awash in a thirstier than ever sea of new population.  What is Las Vegas
but an inevitable pimple?  Don't blame the rash for the heat. 

But it is a diagnostic symptom. Incidentally, you don't need a (?).
Cotton *is* California's most important agricultural product.

(?) because cotton is very water intensive (lots of evaporation) and
relatively cheap at original point of sale, i.e. a bad match for a
nominally arid region without some extraordinary subsidy of resources
(water).   More silly than Los Vegas, in a sense.  One peculiar irony is
that salinity is being concentrated in farming regions of California
instead of in the various salt flats (which are shrinking) all due to
widely varied but related aspects of present day (& this century) water
management.

Who needs to visit Las Vegas, anyhow, when we here in AA have the Domino's
Holiday Display, which must rival several large casinos for wattage on
display and drawing power towards lambs and sheep. 

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