About Las Vegas

24 September 2016

By John Marchel

Las Vegas, officially the City of Las Vegas and often known as simply “Vegas,” is the most populous city in the state of Nevada. It is the county seat of Clark County, and the city proper of the Las Vegas Valley.

Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city known primarily for gambling, shopping, fine dining and nightlife and is the leading financial and cultural center for Southern Nevada. The well known “Strip” is located south of the city limits in the unincorporated county towns of Paradise and Winchester.

Las Vegas has had a lot of nicknames given to it over the years: “The Entertainment Capital of the World," "Sin City," "Capital of Second Chances," "The Wedding Capital," "Lost Wages," "The Gambling Capital of the World," “The City that Doesn’t Sleep,” “Disneyland for Adults,” “The City of Lights,” “Desert of Dreams,” “Glitter Gulch,” and “The Strip.” As time goes on, and Las Vegas re-invents itself, like it has done in the past, new names are sure to appear.

BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

• The Las Vegas Strip in Nevada, going from the Stratosphere Casino to Mandalay Bay Casino, is only about four miles long. Walking at a normal rate of 3 miles per hour in a straight line, it would take 80 minutes.

• In 1953 Las Vegas had 1,800 rooms on the Strip. A first-class hotel room cost $7.50; a motel would run about $3.00 a day. Rooms have become a little more expensive today.

• The MGM in Las Vegas is the largest hotel in the U.S., with a little over 5,000 rooms. It also has more elevators than any other hotel: 93. In addition it houses 18,000 doors throughout the hotel.

• On average, 60,000 pounds of shrimp are consumed each day in Las Vegas. That is more that the rest of the entire country combined.

• The marquees of the fifty largest casino-hotels in Las Vegas use enough electricity to run more than a thousand average U.S. homes.

• At one time a 700-foot wide river flowed through Las Vegas Valley. That was only 40,000 years ago.

• Want to play golf in Las Vegas? The number of local golf courses is 37, with another two dozen nearby.

• Las Vegas is the only place in the world where Elvis (impersonator) can marry you at a drive-up window in a pink Cadillac and be available 24 hours a day.

• Do you like buffets? Las Vegas has over 50 to choose from.

• There are more Master Sommeliers (the top professional wine stewards) in Las Vegas (13) than in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco.

• From space, the brightest man-made place in the world is Las Vegas, Nevada.