LAS VEGAS — Who'd have bet 100 years ago that this parched and dusty watering hole on a missionaries' route from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles would ever amount to anything?

Las Vegas turned out to be a world-famous playground with 17 of the 20 largest hotels in the world and an airport landing jumbo jets filled with gamblers from Europe and Asia and across North America.

Photos by H. LORREN AU JR./Orange County [Calif.] Register (ENLARGE)
From 1969 to 1976, Elvis Presley performed more than 800 times in the main showroom of the Las Vegas Hilton. This life-size statue in the hotel lobby stands as kingly tribute.
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Las Vegas' Golden Gate Hotel and Casino (much altered) dates from 1906. Hovering above it is the Fremont Street Experience, an addition from the 1990s.
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Las Vegas has definitely come far from its desert-springs beginnings. Glitzy casinos rise and suburbs keep sprawling in the city that was the fastest-growing U.S. metropolitan area in the 1990s. Las Vegas and environs are home to 1.6 million people.
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This city has always been about rolling the dice and taking a risk. This year, Sin City celebrates the 100th anniversary of a property auction that many say marks the birth of today's megalopolis.

Many versions of Las Vegas have risen and fallen since. Newer, bigger and brasher have always been the bywords.

But you can still find vestiges of each era hidden between the skyscraper hotels and behemoth casinos.

In the beginning: The old Mormon fort

The irony is that the future Sin City was established in 1855 by Mormon missionaries who came upon the natural springs and hoped to forge a new promised land in the desert.

They diverted Las Vegas Creek for the water to irrigate farms. An adobe fort was erected to protect settlers from the natives, who had discovered the area a few eons earlier.

Old Vegas Mormon State Historic Park is in downtown Las Vegas, at Las Vegas Boulevard and Washington Avenue. The park and visitors center is open all year 8 a.m-4:30 p.m. www.parks.nv.gov/olvmf.htm.

1900s: Open up that Golden Gate

The first lots in what was called Clark's Las Vegas Townsite were sold for $200 apiece in May 1905. The next year Miller's Hotel opened at the corner of what would become Fremont and Main streets. It's hard to believe after all the bulldozing and implosions of the intervening century that the inn still stands — altered more than a bit.

What's now called the Golden Gate Hotel and Casino sits on a pedestrian mall beneath the Fremont Street Experience sky cage. But it's the significantly intact descendant of the hotel that opened in 1906. Its current Barbary Coast theme comes from the major event of the year it opened — the San Francisco earthquake and fire. In keeping with its age, the hotel still offers its famous 99-cent shrimp cocktail.

1 Fremont St., 1-800-426-1906, www.goldengate casino.net.

1910s: Welcome to Las Vegas

Not much remains from this period. In 1910, the Nevada Legislature passed a law barring any kind of gambling, even coin flipping. Times have changed. To mark this era, we'll send you out to the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada" sign on the far south end of the Strip. It was erected in 1959 by the legendary YESCO sign company, responsible for most of the great (and now mostly gone) neon signs. The existence of the sign wouldn't be possible without the 1911 decision to incorporate the city of Las Vegas, spurring more growth inside the city limits and in unincorporated Clark County, future home of the Strip.

On Las Vegas Boulevard near Sunset Road.

1920s: Divorce, Western style

No mirage: Imagine a Las Vegas where gambling and booze were illegal. But 1920s Las Vegas had another draw: divorce. While most seeking a split went to Reno, a crop of dude ranches in Las Vegas appeared to serve those who made the trip from Southern California. While waiting to untie the knot, visitors could ride horses in the desert and have chuckwagon dinners.

One of the most popular was David Lorenzi's resort on the north side of town. Today the site is Lorenzi Park, one of the most placid spots in the hyperactive city. Come out for a stroll on the 60 acres or to watch a free concert at the Sammy Davis Jr. Festival Plaza. The Nevada State Museum and Historical Society is in the park.

West Washington Avenue and Twin Lakes Drive. 702-229-6718.

1930s: Wet and wild

If Las Vegas had a turning-point year, it was 1931. Gambling was legalized, and the government began work on the massive dam at Black Canyon, about 30 miles southeast of the city.

With more than 3,500 workers and an annual payroll of $500,000, the Boulder Dam was a boon to casinos: Men with lots of money and virtually nowhere else to spend it. Later renamed Hoover Dam, the massive 6.6-million-ton concrete plug in the Colorado River still impresses. It's a National Historic Landmark that the American Society of Civil Engineers hails as one of America's Seven Modern Civil Engineering Wonders.

The Interior Department offers tours of the dam. 702-294-3517, www.usbr.gov/lc/hoover dam/service/index.html.

1940s: Bugsy's place

The Flamingo wasn't the first modern casino in Las Vegas (it was the El Cortez, still in business). Or even the first on what became the Strip (the long-gone El Rancho can claim that title). But gangster Bugsy Siegel's fussy pink playground helped turn Las Vegas into an international destination.

Little is left of the original place. Check out the fabulous Flamingo Pool, with tall statues of the goofy birds. Nearby is a plaque honoring the mobster as one of the modern gambling mecca's founding fathers.

3555 Las Vegas Blvd. S., 1-888-308-8899, www.flamingolv.com.

1950s: Boomtown

What became Nellis Air Force Base opened in 1941. Then, from 1951 to 1958, more than 100 atomic bomb tests took place at the nearby Nevada Test Site. Mushroom clouds could be seen over the waving neon cowboy on Fremont Street known as Vegas Vic. Tourists would come out to see the tests. The tale of those days is told at the new Atomic Testing Museum, which is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

755 E. Flamingo Road, 702-794-5161, www.ntshf.org.

1960s: The Strip

The balance of power between downtown and the Strip had flipped by the 1960s and never went back. High-end hotels like the Sands and Sahara were trolled by Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack. Big-name entertainers headlined ever larger showrooms. The road from Las Vegas toward Los Angeles was lined with the biggest, brashest gambling halls in the world.

Most of the classic casinos have been literally blown away over the years as today's mega-resorts rose toward the end of the last century. Massive video screens have replaced the once ubiquitous neon. You can still get a feel for what it was like at the old Stardust Hotel, especially when you gaze at its amazing neon sign out front.

3000 S. Las Vegas Blvd. 1-800-634-6757, www.stardustlv.com.

1970s: Elvis

Watchers of Elvis Presley impersonators know they concentrate on just two Elvises. One is the 1950s Boy From Tupelo in black leather with the greasy swept-up hairdo. More often, it's the '70s Las Vegas Elvis, in white sequined jumpsuit, extra-large aviator sunglasses, blow-dried hair and long sideburns.

For one-stop Elvis, go to the Elvis-a-Rama Museum, which showcases $3 million in memorabilia.

3401 S. Industrial Road, 702-309-7200, www.elvisarama.com.

1980s: Grand glitz

Las Vegas had had giant hotels and gambling halls for nearly 30 years when Steve Wynn took things a step further with the opening of the Mirage in 1989. Though it came at the very end of the decade, the move kicked off a building boom. Huge, glitzy palaces rose where high rollers could indulge in world-class luxury unknown in the previously kitsch-driven world of Vegas resorts.

Wynn's move set off a battle of casino owners to build the biggest, best and most expensive resorts, culminating with Bellagio and Wynn Las Vegas. In the coming years, armies of celebrity chefs from around the country would convert Vegas' burger-and-buffet culture into one featuring some of the best eateries in the nation.

3400 S. Las Vegas Blvd., 1-800-374-9000, www.mirage.com.

1990s: Family town

Sometimes marketing can take hold of a whole city. In Las Vegas, the mantra of the last decade of the 20th century was "family friendly." The aging baby boomers wanted to come to Las Vegas with their kids in tow.

The MGM Hotel opened a theme park in its back yard. Roller coasters sprouted at casinos. Wet n' Wild opened right on the Strip, though casinos built bigger pools to pull in family vacationers. The family-friendly heyday is on display at the massive Excalibur resort, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. The cartoonish castle architecture seems pulled right out of a Saturday kiddie show. The hotel has midway carnival games, video arcades and child-friendly eating options.

3850 S. Las Vegas Blvd., 1-800-937-7777, www.excaliburlasvegas.com.

2000s: The return of Sin City

The family thing didn't click. The kids couldn't come into the casinos. All those parents really wanted to get away from the tykes and party like they'd done during their younger days.

Wet n' Wild closed. MGM stripped away Dorothy and all the "Wizard of Oz" stuff and closed the theme park out back. The new slogan became a marriage counselor's nightmare: "What Happens Here Stays Here."

The new casino battlefront became bigger and better bars and nightclubs. Strip joints became "gentlemen's clubs." Topless-bathing areas proliferated.

Nothing symbolized the change more than the once family-friendly Treasure Island pirate ship spectacle in front of the hotel. Gone were the burly boy pirates. In their place are scantily clad female swashbucklers dubbed "The Sirens of TI" who battle on the ship Eros. The new production draws inspiration less from Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate novel than the "Girls Gone Wild" soft-porn videos.

3300 S. Las Vegas Blvd., 702-894-7111, www.treasureisland.com. "Sirens of TI" shows nightly at 7, 8:30, 10 and 11:30.

The future: Las Vegas arrives

The biggest story may be that Las Vegas has finally arrived. For most of its history, it's been a party spot in the desert.

More than 1.6 million people call Clark County home — a sixfold increase since 1970. The metropolis is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. Subdivisions spread out to the horizons. For a view of it all, go to the Stratosphere. It's the tallest building west of the Mississippi River (1,149 feet). Befitting Las Vegas, there's a roller coaster at the top.

2000 S. Las Vegas Blvd., 1-800-998-6937, www.stratospherehotel.com.

Information

• A fantastic list of 100 Las Vegas highlights is at www.vegas.com/lounge/centennial.

• Great images of early casinos are at www.earlyvegas.com.