Compared with other cities in the West, 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. http://wikitravel.org/en/Las Vegas