Early history
11,000 BC. Paleo-Indians first hunt big game in the cool, lush Las Vegas Valley.
AD 1150 Paiute Indians begin to winter in the Las Vegas Valley.
1829 Mexican trader Antonio Armijo camps near desert springs and names the area Las Vegas, Spanish for “the meadows”.
1844 Noted explorer John C. Fremont, leading an overland expedition, camps at a site that as a tribute to him years later becomes known as Fremont Street, in downtown Las Vegas.
Roulette at a Casino, circa 1930
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Pioneer years
1848 US acquires the region by treaty after winning the Mexican War.
1855–7 Mormons found a settlement in Las Vegas to convert the Paiutes.
1902 San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City Railroad (later known as Union Pacific) buys land and lays out Las Vegas.
1908 Telephone and water lines are established in the region.
1911 The city of Las Vegas is incorporated on March 16.
Golden age
1920 The first Vegas gaming hall, the Northern Club, is opened in Downtown’s Fremont Street.
1931 Gambling in Nevada is legalized.
1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates Hoover Dam.
1946 Mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel opens the Flamingo Hotel, attracting Hollywood stars to Las Vegas.
1955 Las Vegas’s first high-rise hotel, the nine-story Riviera, is built.
1960 The Rat Pack comes to town.
Modern Las Vegas
1989 The Mirage casino opens with 3,039 rooms.
1990 Las Vegas’s population reaches 258,295, doubling in just a decade.
1992 The success of Warren Beatty’s movie Bugsy prompts the Flamingo Hilton to open the Bugsy Celebrity Theater.
1993 The MGM Grand opens as the world’s biggest resort.
1995 The Fremont Street Experience opens. Gaming revenues are $5.7 billion, 78 percent of the US total.
1997 New York-New York, a scaled-down version of Manhattan, opens.
1998 The Bellagio, the world’s most expensive hotel ($1.7 billion), opens.
Fremont Street in 1967
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21st century
2000 The Venetian opens. Vegas now has 19 of the world’s 20 biggest hotels.
2002 Nevada is named the fastest-growing state in the US.
2003 Roy (of Siegfried & Roy) is badly mauled by one of the pair’s tigers and the act is forced to close.
2004 The Harrah’s group buys historic casino Binion’s Horseshoe from the Binion family. In July, the long-awaited monorail opens.
2005 Steve Wynn’s eponymous Wynn Las Vegas opens.
2007 The $1.9 billion Palazzo resort opens; the hotel complex is named the largest hotel in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records.
2008 OJ Simpson is found guilty of armed robbery and the kidnapping of two sports memorabilia dealers in Las Vegas, and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
2009 The CityCenter complex opens and is the largest privately funded construction project in the history of the United States.
2010 The enormous Cosmopolitan luxury resort casino and hotel opens, with 2,995 rooms.
2012 The UK’s Prince Harry is photographed naked whilst partying in a Las Vegas hotel.
2013 Britney Spears kicks off her Las Vegas casino residency.
2014 The High Roller, a 500-ft (152-meter) observation wheel, opens.
2015 Fire engulfs the 14th floor of the Cosmopolitan hotel, causing $2m worth of damage.