Masonry Magazine August 1977 Page. 7
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The spectacular desert scenery provides year-round recreation for Las Vegans and tourists alike, whether camping, boating, fishing, hiking, skiing, roaming in recreational vehicles, or just looking.
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The face of the boom town is shaped by a billion-dollar-a-year gambling industry and the nearly 10 million tourists who visit each year, many of them as convention delegates.
The Strip hotels have become recreation "cities" which offer swimming, golf, tennis, health clubs, and nightly wall-to-wall entertainment. Downtown "Casino Center" has a more budget-minded version of the same Las Vegas luxury. Any way you go with accommodations and dining, from world-famous gourmet rooms to bargain breakfasts, you can't beat Las Vegas for the price.
Here is what Las Vegas offers as a scenic wonderland: it is in the middle of a spectacular geographic area which includes the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Disneyland and Yosemite National Park.
And only a short distance from Las Vegas are Mt. Charleston, Valley of Fire State Park, and Red Rock Recreation Area.
Lake Mead, under the supervision of the National Park Service, provides year-round water recreation on its 255-square-mile surface for more than five million swimmers, boaters, water skiers, and fishermen every year.
Mt. Charleston, the nearly 12,000-foot-high peak of the Spring Range to the west of the city, is a cool summer haven to campers and picnickers and turns into a skiers' paradise in the winter.
The Valley of Fire State Park, about a one-hour drive northeast of Las Vegas, is a 26,000-acre panorama of weird, wind-sculpted sandstone formations and ancient Indian petroglyphs. Also a tourist's delight is the Lost City Museum in Overton, Nevada.
Hoover Dam, which is the highest concrete dam in the Western Hemisphere at 726 feet, has attracted nearly 18 million tourists since its completion in 1935. This monument to man's engineering genius is 35 miles south of Las Vegas in Black Canyon on the Arizona-Nevada border. Boat tours are also scheduled daily on Lake Mead.
To go along with the desert beauty is a mild climate with summer highs over 100 degrees, but winter days are usually in the 50 to 60 degree range. Combine this with low humidity and sunny days 80 percent of the year, and Las Vegas has an ideal climate for viewing nature's wonders.
And then there is Las Vegas the boom town: gambling profits increase annually at about a 12 percent rate (nearly $1.3 billion in 1976 for Nevada). And the city is still growing. During the 70's Las Vegas saw seven new hotels open their doors, while virtually every major resort/casino property was involved in some type of expansion, which included increases in rooms and convention space. During the 1970's 12,000 hotel/motel rooms were added to the Las Vegas scene, and in 1977 nearly 5,000 more were on the drawing boards.
Whether visitors just want to come and look at the scenery, see lavish stage productions, taste fine food, try their luck at the tables, or conduct some serious convention business, Las Vegas seems to have it all. And most visitors with conventions try to do it all.
Strip Glitter-like a gigantic display of fire works, the famed Las Vegas Strip comes to life at sunset each day. More than three miles of colorful marquees stand out against the skyline, culminating in downtown Las Vegas and Fremont Street in the distant background.