North Las Vegas

North Las Vegas is a city in southern Nevada, on the northern edge of the Las Vegas Valley in the Mojave Desert. Its northern districts reach the Tule Springs fossil beds, where the bones of mammoths, camels and giant ground sloths lie in old spring deposits.

Thomas Williams, a Utah rancher, bought land north of Las Vegas in 1917 and sold lots to families who wanted to live outside the stricter rules of the older town. The small settlement grew with the building of Hoover Dam in the 1930s and the army air field that opened nearby in the 1940s. Incorporation as a city followed in 1946, and the growth of Las Vegas brought housing tracts across the desert in the following decades. Planned communities such as Aliante were laid out on open land in the north from the early 2000s.

Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument protects the fossil sites along the Upper Las Vegas Wash, at the city's northern edge. Floyd Lamb Park, built around the old Tule Springs Ranch, has ponds with ducks and peacocks among the cottonwood trees. Craig Ranch Regional Park has an amphitheater, a dog park and a skate park on the site of a former golf course. The College of Southern Nevada keeps its oldest campus in the city, on Cheyenne Avenue.

Aliante Casino and Hotel, run by Boyd Gaming, opened in the planned community of Aliante in the late 2000s. The Apex Industrial Park, along Interstate 15 to the northeast, has warehouses and plants on land the city annexed for industry. Nellis Air Force Base lies on the city's eastern edge, and the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, home of desert bighorn sheep, stretches north into the Sheep Range.