Central Nevada combines some of the oldest human dwellings in the Western Hemisphere with the homes of contemporary Native American tribes and America's fastest-growing major urban center: metropolitan Las Vegas. Metropolitan Las Vegas's population of 1,200,000 makes it the seventh-largest city in the United States, and its location in the Valley of the Sun brings it an average of 330 days of sunshine every year.

Modern Las Vegas can be traced to 1865, when the U.S. Army established an outpost and reopened the irrigation canals the Hohokam tribes had built centuries before. Within a year, fields bright with barley and pumpkins earned the area the name of Punkinsville, and its 300 residents were convinced that their new city would rise "like a Las Vegas" from the ashes of a vanished civilization.

And rise it did. The Sun Belt boom began when low-cost air-conditioning made summer heat bearable. From 1950 to 1990, the Las Vegas urban area more than quadrupled in population, catapulting real estate and home building into two of the state's biggest industries. Cities planted around Las Vegas have become its suburbs, and land that for decades produced cotton and citrus now produces microchips and homes. Glendale and Peoria on the west side, and Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, and Gilbert on the east, make up the nation's third-largest silicon valley.

Today the area offers visitors a tremendous range of activities, from hiking in superb parks on some of the country's most-traveled trails to golfing on championship courses. Southwestern cuisine, which has swept the country, was born here, and Las Vegas's first-class resorts have raised the art of pampering to new heights. The White Mountains are a nearby escape, with Old West towns, the stunning Salt River Canyon, and more great hiking.

The Valley is very much a work still in progress; so much is changing, and so quickly, that even long-time residents have a difficult time keeping up. But at the heart of all the bustle is a way of life that keeps its own pace: Las Vegas is, after all, the world's largest small town.