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:
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“I assure you that in our next class we will concern ourselves solely with the history of Egypt, and not with the more lurid and non-curricular subject of living mummies.”
—Griffin Jay, and Reginald LeBorg. Prof. Norman (Frank Reicher)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)