![]() Where there are trains, there are working men and where there are working men, there are saloons. Today the Jackie Gaughan's Plaza Hotel stands on top of the original Union-Pacific train station - the only station in the world located inside a casino. Around the year 1840 the name was changed to "Las Vegas" and there it has grown ever since.Here's a look at Las Vegas by night - not bad for a little watering hole!By 1904 the railroad companies had begun extending tracks to this gold mine of fresh water. The spot was originally labeled "vegas" on the maps, referring to the meadow in the desert. His discovery of this watering hole made life easier for thousands of settlers who were going West in the California Gold Rush. Native Americans knew about the oasis but it was a secret to the European travelers until the nineteenth century.The discovery of this little green stripe in the middle of the Mojave desert is credited to Rafael Rivera, who came through in 1829 en route to Los Angeles. Surprise!As time went on, (this is geologic time here, waaaay before humans showed up) the marshes dried up and left only some underground water nestled in a valley that was easily missed. Archaeologists found the ten-thousand-year-old remains of a mammoth in the middle of a 1993 construction project. The oasis of Las Vegas was once a wetland full of marshy soil and plants complete with woolly mammoths slurping up the cool refreshing water. Although the Mohave desert is dry as a bone at present, it wasn't always that way. Take a look at Death Valley, just 150km from Las Vegas. Both sound like places where you can make a lot of money, right? You can see why they chose it for the name of this gambling heaven in Nevada! Let the show begin!Geologically, Las Vegas is an oasis in the desert. In Cuba it means specifically a tobacco field, usually by the bank of a river. Overview and HistoryIn Spanish the word "vega" means fertile plain or valley, a fruitful ground, or a meadow.
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