In 1902 the land on which Las Vegas now stands was sold to a railroad company. The area that is now downtown was subdivided when the tracks came through, with 1200 lots sold on 15 May 1905 alone - a date now celebrated as the city's birthday.

As a railroad town, Las Vegas had machine shops, an ice works and a good number of hotels, saloons, brothels and gambling houses. The railroad laid off hundreds in the mid-1920s, but one Depression-era development gave the city a new life. The huge Hoover Dam (then known as Boulder Dam) project commenced in 1931, providing jobs in the short term and water and power for the city's long-term growth.

In 1931, Nevada legalised gambling and simplified its divorce laws, paving the way for the first big casino on the Strip, El Rancho, which was built by Los Angeles developers and opened in 1941. The next wave of investors, also from out of town, were mobsters like Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel, who opened the Flamingo in 1946 and set the tone for the new casinos - big and flashy, with glitzy entertainment laid on to attract high rollers.

The dazzle that brought in the more lavish cash-lashers also attracted smaller spenders. Southern California provided a growing market for Las Vegas entertainment, and improvements in transport made it accessible to the rest of the country. Thanks to air conditioning and reliable water supplies, Vegas became one of the country's most popular tourist destinations. Until recently, Vegas had bent over backwards to remake itself into a family resort destination, but the end of the 20th century saw a tidal-wave movement to put the sin back in 'Sin City'. Megaresorts have outdone each other with fiery artificial volcanoes, million-gallon fishtanks and miniature Manhattans. All of this - along with dozens of artificial lakes in the suburbs - has put a huge strain on the city's water supply, but it hasn't slowed the development juggernaut.

The 21st century started off with a bang, as casino mogul Steve Wynn blew up the vintage Desert Inn hotel, then spent five years crafting his eponymous resort, Wynn, which opened in 2005 - just in the nick of time for Las Vegas' centennial celebrations. A serious disruption to the city's well-honed reputation as a capital of low culture was the arrival of a Vegas branch of the Guggenheim museum in 2001 and the Smithsonian-affiliated Atomic Testing Museum two years later. Today Las Vegas boasts all but a few of the world's 20 largest hotels, attracts 35 million visitors per year (100,000 of whom get married there), and earns over USD$ 5250000000 in annual gaming revenue. As slot machines go cashless and omnipotent surveillance goes digital, the illusion of Sin City approaches an Orwellian dream-nightmare. There is no place in the world like Las Vegas, and no city even pretending to be.