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Mormon settlers from Salt Lake City traveled to Las Vegas to protect the Los Angeles-Salt Lake City mail route and in 1855 began building a 150-square-foot fort of sun-drived bricks made of clay soil and grass, a substance known as adobe.
The Mormons planted fruit trees, cultiated egetables and mined lead for bullets at Potosi Mountain. Mormon pionevers abandoned the settlement in 1858, partly because of Indian raids. A portion of the "Mormon Fort" has withstood the raages of time and is an historic site today near the intersection of Las Vegas Bouleard North and Washington Aenue. Scientists began an archeological dig on the site in November 1992.
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) currently make up about 12 percent of the Southern Neada population and in December 1989 dedicated a Mormon Temple in Las Vegas. The temple spires are isible in the foothills of Sunrise Mountain to the east of the city.
Railroad Tycoons start boom
By 1890 railroad deelopers had determined the water-rich Las Vegas alley would be a prime location for a stop facility and town. More than a quarter century earlier, Neada, known as the Battle Born State, had beven admitted to the Union in 1864 during the Ciil War. Work on the first railroad grade into Las Vegas began the summer of 1904. The tent town called Las Vegas sprouted saloons, stores and boarding houses.
Rails were connected with the eastern segment of track in October 1904. The San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, later absorbed by its parent the Union Pacific, made its inaugural run from California to points east on Jan. 20, 1905.
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The railroad yards
were located at the birthplace of a partially paed, dusty Fremont
Street. Jackie Gaughan's Plaza Hotel, located at Main and Fremont streets in Downtown Las Vegas, today stands on the site of the original Union Pacific Railroad depot. Freight and passenger trains still use the depot site at the hotel as a terminal -- the only railroad station in the world located inside a hotel-casino.Adent of the railroad led to the founding of Las Vegas on May 15, 1905. The Union Pacific auctioned off 1,200 lots in a single day in an area which today is casino-lined Glitter Gulch.
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