How Las Vegas Exists in America's Driest Desert

las vegas is one of the most well-known cities anywhere in the world tens of millions of people visited every single year who contribute to making it the third most visited city in the united states by foreign tourists just behind new york and miami las vegas receives so many foreign tourists that it beats out many other major tourist hotspot cities across the world like los angeles chicago shanghai barcelona berlin vienna and even venice in order to accommodate all these visitors las vegas possesses a truly impressive hospitality arsenal of around 150 000 hotel rooms which is more than any other city on the planet has got and this is despite the fact that las vegas itself is a relatively young city having only existed for a tad longer than a century and with a relatively small metropolitan population of only little more than 2.2 million people which only ranks it as the 26th largest city in the united states but las vegas size and age are irrelevant factors to the massive volumes of tourists who arrive here every single year for them they almost all come for just one single thing vegas's legendary reputation as the entertainment capital of the world and the greatest playground for adults anywhere on the earth along with louisiana the state of nevada where las vegas is located is the only american state to a fully legalized casino gambling statewide which has long caused vegas to be almost synonymous with gambling and casinos around 8 in every 10 visitors to the city will gamble at one of the numerous casinos while they're there and bet an average of around six hundred dollars a person while slightly more than half of all visitors will attend one of the many shows hosted in the city as well altogether these tourists visiting the city generally contribute more than 100 billion dollars per year to the nevada state economy and place las vegas as one of the top travel destinations in the world but the strangest aspect of this city for me as someone who spent much of their childhood growing up in nevada with more visits to las vegas than i can even count is the fact that all of this outrageous entertainment and excess for tens of millions of people all seemingly exists precisely where it shouldn't in the middle of the driest and least hospitable desert of the north american continent the mojave desert this is the same desert that includes death valley after all the ominously and appropriately named valley located just a two hour drive from the las vegas strip that recorded the hottest temperature ever measured on the surface of the earth a little more than a century ago in 1913 at 134 degrees fahrenheit or 57 degrees celsius the mojave desert is so dry that the area around las vegas itself only receives an average of around four inches of rainfall per year which is even less rain than timbuk2 receives in mali at the southern edge of the sahara desert in 2020 las vegas set a still-standing record of going 224 entire straight days without a single drop of rainfall and the reason for las vegas extreme dryness is almost entirely geographical the mojave desert itself is located entirely east of the towering sierra nevada mountains of california with peaks as high as mount whitney at 14 505 feet the highest point anywhere in the contiguous 48 united states and a mere 85 miles away as the crow flies from the aforementioned death valley the lowest point on the north american continent at 282 feet beneath sea level these towering mountains block most of the moisture that blows into north america from the westerly winds of the pacific and they therefore cast what's known as a rain shadow across their east where the moisture coming in from the pacific fails to penetrate into of course las vegas itself is located directly within this rain shadow cast by the sierra nevada but it's also located within a valley here that's surrounded by even further mountain ranges on every side some of which soar up to 10 000 feet in elevation and block even more moisture from blowing into the city with the wind from beyond and the nearest significant river and source of fresh water to this valley the colorado is around 30 miles away from it in short this valley was never historically a very attractive location to build even a settlement and much less a modern metropolis of two and a quarter million people and as a result it was basically nothing of any more significance than sparsely populated desert for thousands of years until the very beginning of the 20th century when the city of las vegas was officially founded in 1905 and incorporated in 1911 but for the next several decades afterwards vegas would remain relatively sleepy and quiet until 1931 when two major things happened that would change the region's demographic destiny forever afterwards with a tiny population of only 94 000 people statewide nevada was by far the least populous state in the country at the time with less than half the population of the next least populous state wyoming reeling from the economic fallout of the great depression and struggling to find anyone who is willing to invest in their tiny state economy the nevada state government decided on a bold course of action they became the first u.s state to legalize nearly every form of gambling in order to bring in at least some kind of economic relief to their state and perhaps even more importantly 1931 also marked the beginning of the construction of the hoover dam on the colorado river just 30 miles away from the city and perhaps even more importantly never before in human history had such a monolithic structure ever been built with concrete thousands of laborers moved in and worked tirelessly for years to finish the job and at least 115 of them lost their lives trying but with the thousands of new workers coming into the town for the damn construction came higher demands for things like entertainment and amenities and with the recent legalization of casino gambling the genesis for las vegas status as the entertainment capital of the world was born when the dam was finished in 1936 it created the largest water reservoir in the entire united states just behind it in the form of lake mead and granted the southwestern united states the ability to generate enormous amounts of electricity through hydropower the colorado river is ideally suited for hydroelectric power generation owing to its large flow and steep gradient descending from its source high up in the rocky mountains of colorado towards the lower elevations of the mojave and sonoran deserts with massive volumes of water pumped to the city directly from lake mead and massive amounts of electricity from the dam investment finally began pouring into las vegas and its unique entertainment industry following the second world war and the population began to steadily increase by 1960 las vegas had finally overtaken reno to become nevada's most populous city with 64 000 people and the population would roughly double from there over the next decade to more than 125 000 people by 1970. more people than lived in the entirety of nevada just 30 years previously from then back in 1940. between 1990 and 2000 the population of las vegas roughly doubled again and by the close of the 20th century las vegas had earned the distinction of being the most populous city in north america that was founded within the same century just like chicago had been during the 19th century but as las vegas fortunes and population continued to soar so too did the demand in the region for the area's sparse supplies of water with its crippling lack of rainfall the population of las vegas and southern nevada is overwhelmingly dependent upon lake mead and the colorado river that feeds it from the snow melt of the rocky mountains accounting for some 90 of all the city's fresh water today back in the 1920s prior to the construction of the hoover dam the seven american states that controlled territory within the colorado river's basin agreed to the colorado river compact an agreement the divided control of the waters within the basin amongst all seven of the states the upper states of colorado utah wyoming and new mexico would be entitled to roughly half of the colorado river's water while the lower states of california arizona and nevada would be entitled to the other half with nearly 59 of that half going to california 37 to arizona and just 4 to nevada but the realities of the 1920s were very different from the realities of today one of the biggest concerns of the agreement both then and now was the expanding population in the southwest particularly in southern california and the resulting increased demand over time for water in the lower basin states at the same time las vegas wasn't even really a factor at all back in the 1920s with a population of less than 3 000 people but with a modern population well in excess of over 2 million nevada has been looking for an increased share in the river's water now for decades but today there are more than 40 million people who depend on the colorado river for their water supply and las vegas is only a small fraction of that and at the same time the colorado river's water has actually been greatly over allocated for decades now because the original estimates of the compact back in the 1920s suggested that the river had an annual average flow of about 17 and a half million acre feet of water that reached the lower basin states of arizona nevada and california however these estimates back at the time were based on just the past 30 years of records going back to the 1890s which were all the records that the people of the 1920s actually had available and modern 21st century studies of tree rings in the area have revealed that those 30 years of records they used just so happened to probably be the wettest period in the american southwest any time in the past 5 to 12 centuries in other words the authors of the 1920s era compact were grossly misinformed on the actual historical average levels of water within the river and more water has been being allocated to the states around it than actually exists within the river almost ever since and then climate change decreased rates of snowfall in the rocky mountains and droughts have been making everything much worse and the situation has now gotten so bad that the colorado river today rarely even has enough flow left in it to make it to its natural delta in the gulf of california in mexico where the once rich natural environment has almost completely died there and dried up this also means that lake mead itself the source of most of modern las vegas fresh water is rapidly shrinking in size last month in june of 2022 the reservoir hit a new all-time low after losing nearly 180 feet of depth over just the past 20 years if the levels drop by another 100 feet the hoover dam will no longer be capable of producing any hydroelectric power but as it has always done now for the past century las vegas is rapidly learning how to adapt to this changing environment and fascinatingly despite being well renowned as a city of tremendous successes las vegas is one of the most water efficient cities in the entire world because they have no other choice but to be remember when i said the nevada is only allocated four percent of the lower colorado river's water that amounts to just around 300 000 acre feet of water today which isn't really a lot when considering the california takes more than 14 times that amount from the river but the catch is that so long as the water is returned back to the river it doesn't actually count against the state in terms of total consumption this loophole means that the southern nevada water authority will usually draw around 445 000 acre feet of water from lake mead during a normal year or about 40 percent more than they're technically allotted for but since the city is capable of cleaning and returning around 220 000 acre feet of water back to lake mead during the same year nevada's total consumption from the river is usually more like just 225 000 acre feet and well beneath their total allotment in order to achieve this incredible rate of water recycling the city of las vegas has enacted a number of ingenious policy and engineering decisions the city has been designed in such a way that every last drop of water that ends up being used indoors gets cleaned and recycled directly back to lake mead you could quite literally turn on every single shower and every single sink in every hotel room in the city and it wouldn't ever consume any more water because it would all just flow through the city sewers directly to water treatment plants and then directly return all clean back to lake mead for future use and further watering lawns within the city limits was strictly limited to just a single day a week and largely because of this focus on sustainable desert design las vegas actually managed to reduce their total water consumption dramatically by 26 over the past 20 years since 2002 despite having added an additional 750 000 new residents to the total population of the city over the same time period and they aren't finished reducing their water consumption either the first type of law of its kind in the united states las vegas banned non-functional and decorative grass in the city last year in 2021 to save even more water grass has been getting torn out across city-owned property across las vegas ever since and it's going to make an enormous difference one square foot of grass consumes 73 gallons of water a year in order to keep alive while more drought-tolerant desert landscaping only consumes 18 gallons a year city officials are spending millions of dollars trying to convince current homeowners to tear out their grassy lawns and replace them with more water friendly desert landscaping options the southern nevada water authority believes that these simple landscaping measures favoring sustainable desert landscaping over non-functional grass will save around nine and a half billion gallons of water a year which is nearly 10 of las vegas total water supply in a lot of senses las vegas is the model city for the rest of the southwestern united states as the region faces increasingly harsher drought conditions and decreasing water supplies as the american government just recently issued its first ever declared water shortage for the colorado river this year it has cut water allocations to all the states along the river including nevadas from 300 000 acre feet to just 279 000 acre feet which when factoring in the rate of las vegas incredible rate of water recycling is still enough to meet current demand but for how much longer many climate experts are warning that water levels within the colorado basin will likely continue to drop over the next several decades when combined with the ever-increasing demand for water from the still-growing population across southern nevada arizona and southern california the life for the desert communities here are almost certainly going to continue growing ever more challenging from a water security perspective the fact simply is that in the future the other cities of the american southwest and everywhere else in the world who will struggle with water supplies in the near future should look to las vegas for their inspiration of a city well designed to cope with the challenges of 21st century climate change in the middle of one of earth's least hospitable desert environments for if life can be sustained for millions of people and tens of millions of visitors here through decades of clever design and foresight it can also be achieved elsewhere now a major reason that i was so excited to make a video covering this topic is because i knew that i could get all kinds of spectacular footage of las vegas and the colorado river without actually having to go travel and visit them myself by simply visiting my stock footage provider instead storyblocks without any exaggeration since the very first real-life lore videos that i created more than six years ago now storyblocks has always been the first place that i've always gone to find footage for all of my videos they offer an unlimited subscription so that you can download and use as much as you need for an annual price that's lower than what many other providers charge for just a single clip and beyond that unlimited subscription storyblocks also offers an entirely royalty-free library meaning that you can use anything from the library for any commercial or personal use and storybox offers far more than just footage and templates they also provide music images sound effects and much more if you're already a creator or you're wanting to become one i can absolutely tell you from my more than six years of experience now as their customer that storyblocks is an absolutely critical resource for you to have i genuinely don't think i know of a single full-time creator who doesn't already have a subscription with them so if you'd like to get started with them as well click the button that's here on screen right now or head over to storyblocks.com real life lore to sign up and by doing so you'll also be greatly supporting my channel at the same time while you're at it and as always thank you so much for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 2,011,632

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know

Id: 4U1TkIdDbRA

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/ChaplnGrillSgt]

Went to Vegas last summer. It topped at 117 with an average daytime temp of 110. It literally hurt to breathe the air. It's insane that Vegas exists. Humans are wild.

[u/umlaut]

Vegas sits on the Colorado River - a massive river system. We have just decided to use that water for agriculture in the desert instead of people.

For some reason, using the water for people is evil, even though 85% of the water from the river goes to agriculture and 50% of that water is used to grow feed for cattle.

[u/throwaway490215]

This channel is turning into a parody of itself with how over emphasize ever second sentence is.

Its all very interesting but perhaps tone it down a bit because if everything has to sound awesome then nothing will.

[u/letsreticulate]

Never underestimate the power of humans when they want a tax shelter and less oversight.