Henderson

Henderson is a city in southern Nevada, on the southeast side of the Las Vegas Valley between the Strip and Lake Mead. It is named after Charles B. Henderson, a United States senator from Nevada who helped bring industry to the site.

The town began in 1941 as housing for the workers of a large plant that refined magnesium from ore mined in the region. When the plant closed in the 1940s, the state bought the town and its industrial site and kept them alive with chemical companies. Several of the wooden houses built for the first plant workers still stand near the old downtown. Henderson was incorporated in 1953, and from the 1980s it grew into a large city of master-planned neighborhoods in the hills and the valley. Lake Las Vegas, a reservoir built in the 1990s on the Las Vegas Wash, has resorts and golf courses along its shore.

Ethel M Chocolates, started by Forrest Mars Sr. and named after his mother, makes its chocolates in a factory in Henderson beside a garden of desert cactus. TIMET, a titanium producer, runs a plant on the old magnesium site that makes titanium sponge for aircraft parts. The Las Vegas Raiders of the NFL have their head office and training center in the city.

The Clark County Wetlands Park, along the Las Vegas Wash, has trails and ponds where herons and ducks feed in the desert. The Henderson Silver Knights play ice hockey in the American Hockey League at an arena in the city as the farm team of the Vegas Golden Knights. Lake Mead National Recreation Area begins at the eastern edge of the city.