History
The first non native americans to settle in the area what would become Las Vegas were a group of Mormons who arrived from Utah in 1855. They constructed a fort located in the current downtown area but would abandon it a few years later. Eventually, other settlers would continue to arrive, taking advantage of the nearby springs as a source of water for agriculture. This water made the area an important water stop and was instrumental in the building of a railroad through the area around 1905. On May 15, 1905, the city of Las Vegas was founded on about 110 acres of land comprising what is now downtown.
Read more about this topic: Downtown Las Vegas
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)