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00:00It's the brightest city in the world,
00:02visible even from space.
00:06But there's much more to this ancient desert land
00:09than its familiar neon glow.
00:13It's here in Nevada where one of the greatest booms
00:16and busts in American history is still etched in the land,
00:22where legends of the old pony experiment
00:25still travel dusty trails, and where wild mustangs still
00:30run free.
00:33Here, thousands of men tamed America's wildest river
00:37with the eighth wonder of the modern world,
00:41towers of steam, kint, and powerful volcanic forces
00:45that simmer below.
00:47And futuristic technology shines,
00:50with the promise of a brighter tomorrow.
00:53From the twisting spine of its sand mountain
00:56to a once-dying lake that now teems with life,
01:00to its valley of fire, only the Silver State
01:08could turn an ancient desert into such a dazzling adventure.
01:13Only Nevada.
01:43In 1852, two brothers, Ethan and Hosea Grosh,
02:01arrived in these barren hills in western Nevada.
02:04At the time, this was pretty much the middle of nowhere.
02:09Dreaming of gold, they pulled out their pickaxes
02:13and started digging.
02:15Five years later, they made an earth-shattering discovery,
02:20a motherlode of silver ore, and under that,
02:24huge deposits of gold.
02:31But before the brothers could register their claim,
02:34one died from a wound from his pickaxe,
02:37and the other left for California.
02:41That's when another prospector named Henry Comstock
02:44muscled in on the find, claiming it as his own.
02:48Soon, these hills were known far and wide as the Comstock Lode.
02:55News of the lode quickly spread across the nation,
02:58and thousands of would-be millionaires
03:00flooded into this dusty corner of Nevada.
03:05Little did most of them know, they would soon
03:08be risking their lives and slaving away for others,
03:11deep under the Nevada desert.
03:15Unlike California's gold that could be picked out of streams,
03:19here, the veins of silver and gold
03:22were buried far underground, which
03:24meant that men had to dig mines that were deeper and more
03:27dangerous than any before, like this one that reached down
03:323,250 feet.
03:37As miners descended, boiling spring water
03:40caused the temperature in the tunnels
03:42to rise higher and higher the deeper they went.
03:46Tools got so hot they could scorch skin.
03:50At the bottom, clouds of steam filled the tunnels,
03:54and underground floods threatened
03:56to boil the miners alive.
03:58Men who had come to Nevada in search of easy money
04:01ended up sweating their lives away
04:03in the depths of other men's mines,
04:06even though some of them earned up to $4 a day,
04:10top wages in those days.
04:13But between shifts, there were plenty of chances
04:16to spend the money they earned.
04:20Along with the miners, merchants and businessmen
04:22arrived, knowing that boom time was
04:25By the early 1860s, the prospector's primitive
04:28campsite, known as Virginitown, was being transformed
04:32into Virginia City.
04:35Today, it's one of the best preserved old mining
04:38towns in America.
04:39Back then, it was one of the finest cities between Denver
04:43and San Francisco.
04:46Some merchants made fortunes feeding, housing,
04:49and entertaining the miners.
04:51Opera houses, saloons, opium dens, and brothels
04:54once lined its streets and helped empty miners' pockets.
04:58The little they had left often went to renting a room
05:01at one of the local hotels.
05:04One of the first built around 1860 was the Gold Hill.
05:08It's now the oldest operating hotel in Nevada.
05:12But back then, many of the miners
05:14were not able to afford the rent.
05:17One miner avoided that fate by turning his time in Virginia
05:20City into another kind of fame and fortune.
05:25After just a few months here, Samuel Clemens
05:27figured out that prospecting wasn't his thing.
05:32Samuel Clemens was a man of few words.
05:35He was a man of few words, but he was a man of few words.
05:39He was a man of few words, but he was a man of few words.
05:44He was a man of few words, but prospecting wasn't his thing.
05:49So he started working for a newspaper
05:51called the Territorial Enterprise
05:53in a brick building downtown.
05:55By the time Clemens left Virginia City,
05:58he was well on his way to fame and fortune as Mark Twain,
06:01thanks to a series of articles he wrote under his new byline.
06:06Today, the old newspaper building
06:07is now the Mark Twain Museum.
06:10Twain later described what it was like to live
06:13in Nevada's first boom town.
06:16The flush times were in magnificent flower.
06:19The city of Virginia claimed a population of 15,000 to 18,000.
06:24And all day long, half of this little army
06:26swarmed the streets like bees.
06:28And the other half swarmed among the drifts and tunnels
06:31of the Comstock, hundreds of feet down on the earth
06:35directly under those same streets.
06:38Often, we felt our chairs jar and heard the faint boom
06:42of a blast down in the bowels of the earth under the office.
06:49Some men in Virginia City were getting fabulously rich.
06:53One of them was George Hearst.
06:59Hearst built this house in Virginia City
07:01while earning the first few million dollars of a fortune
07:04that would allow his son to build California's
07:06famed Hearst Castle.
07:09Later, industrialist John Mackey lived here
07:13and earned millions more.
07:16He and the Comstock's other newly minted tycoons
07:19became known as the Silver Kings.
07:24As more and more precious ore arrived on the surface,
07:27the Silver Kings needed a cheap and fast way
07:29to get it out of town.
07:30In 1868, a banker named William Sherwin
07:34built a railroad to do that job.
07:38Called the Virginia and Truckee Railroad,
07:40it still carries passengers today.
07:44Sherwin's trains brought raw ore from the mines
07:47down to the smelters, but purified it
07:50into silver and gold, chugging back up again
07:53with the lumber and other supplies
07:55that kept Virginia's oil and gas supply running.
08:00The Silver Kings were the first to see Virginia City booming
08:05and ferrying passengers to and from the transcontinental rail
08:08lines in Reno.
08:14But for the Silver Kings, the VNT's most important
08:17destination was a little town just 15 miles to the southwest.
08:23In 1863, Congress had picked tiny Carson City
08:27and stamped the gold and silver flooding out of the Comstock
08:30into coins.
08:33In 1866, this elegant building rose
08:37in what was then the middle of the Nevada wilderness.
08:40The first coins finally came off its presses in 1870.
08:46By then, this once rough and tumble frontier
08:49was getting civilized.
08:52And many of the desperate characters
08:54that had made its Wild West days wild
08:57were being locked up here, in the Nevada State Prison.
09:04This high security facility has been home
09:06to Nevada's death row.
09:10Located next to a quarry, the prison's early inmates
09:13had to mine the stone used to build their own cell blocks,
09:17as well as the mint and other buildings
09:19needed by a new state capital.
09:22No building in Carson City put that stone
09:25than the one crowned by this silvery dome.
09:34Construction of Nevada's first statehouse began in 1870.
09:39The next year, the legislature met here for the first time,
09:43gathering under this painted silver dome
09:46to govern the thriving Silver State.
09:49At the time, Carson City was also home
09:52to a bustling Chinese community.
09:55In the 1880s, roughly 10% of the city's residents were Chinese,
10:00many of them drawn here by jobs on the railroad.
10:07But by then, the boom times that had brought them here
10:10were already turning to bust.
10:14The ore in the Comstock load was running out.
10:18Henry Comstock's time had run out, too.
10:22The claims that he had sold for a reputed $12,000
10:26had been resold for millions.
10:29It's believed that Comstock, penniless,
10:31put a revolver to his head and pulled the trigger.
10:40During the busiest days of the Comstock load,
10:42one miner had died, on average, every week
10:46in his hunt for silver and gold.
10:50Now, as the ore petered out, the survivors began to leave.
10:55The population of Virginia City's Story County
10:58dropped from nearly 20,000 in 1875
11:02to less than 4,000 by the turn of the century.
11:06Blocks of its historic buildings lay abandoned for decades,
11:12only to be revived in the middle of the 20th century
11:14by a new boom in tourism.
11:21These days, the theme park atmosphere here
11:23can make the tough times of Virginia City's past
11:26seem like ancient history.
11:29But this hasn't been the last dusty corner of Nevada
11:31to be transformed by a boom of epic proportions
11:36or to be hit by the hard times that follow.
11:45These are the twisting dunes of Nevada's Sand Mountain.
11:50They look like the spine of an ancient ocean creature
11:53beached on this desert land.
11:57From above, they appear as waves on a sea.
12:02But for miles around Sand Mountain,
12:04there's no water to be seen.
12:08Nevada's parched landscape appears
12:10to stretch on for eternity.
12:15Today, this is America's driest state,
12:18with an average rainfall of just seven inches per year.
12:23It's easy to imagine that this land has always
12:26looked this way, even in its prehistoric past.
12:31Back during the last ice age, much of western Nevada
12:35was actually covered by a body of water
12:38that scientists call Lake Lahontan.
12:42Then, with the end of the last glacial age,
12:45as temperatures in Nevada started to rise,
12:47Lake Lahontan began to evaporate.
12:50Most of the lake disappeared.
12:56But luckily, part of it has survived
12:59and is now a stunning desert oasis.
13:09Nearly 10,000 years ago, Native Americans
13:12from the Paiute tribe arrived in this unforgiving desert.
13:20For generations, they drank the lake's water, ate its fish,
13:25and shared its bounty with flocks of white pelicans.
13:32Every year, these beautiful birds
13:35return from Southern California and Baja, Mexico,
13:38to summer a nest on Anaho Island in the center
13:41of the lake.
13:43They're still coming back today.
13:46But their refuge was almost destroyed in the early part
13:49of the 20th century.
13:51It was only saved thanks to a hard-fought legal battle waged
13:55by their Paiute neighbors, a battle with roots
13:59that go back even farther, to 1844,
14:04when famed explorer John Fremont and scout Kit Carson
14:07arrived here on their way to the West.
14:11Fremont mapped the shoreline and named these waters Pyramid Lake
14:16after a rock formation just offshore.
14:19Soon, settlers were following his trail.
14:23With their arrival, life on the lake's ancient shores
14:27began to change.
14:30In 1905, the flow from the Truckee River,
14:33the lake's only source, mysteriously began to slow.
14:39As the shoreline steadily receded,
14:41Pyramid Lake seemed doomed to become yet another dry Nevada
14:45lake bed.
14:48But then the Paiute discovered the cause of the lake's
14:51decline, a US Bureau of Reclamation project called
14:56the Derby Diversion Dam.
14:58It blocked the Truckee and funneled much of its water
15:01away from the ancient stream bed into a new canal.
15:06From there, it flowed to farms and ranches,
15:09which was a good thing for crops and livestock,
15:14but hard on the Paiute and the pelicans, who
15:18depended on the river's water.
15:22Starting in the 1960s, the Paiute
15:25fought back, demanding that the Truckee's water be re-diverted
15:29to their dying lake.
15:32The battle over the lake continued for decades,
15:36until in the 1980s, the Paiute finally won.
15:41Farmers were forced to share the water with the Paiute, who
15:44can once again rely on its bounty.
15:49And Anaho Island is again home to one
15:52of the largest nesting colonies of pelicans in the US.
15:58But Nevada's desperate need for water
16:01continues, as do efforts to engineer a solution.
16:08To the south of Pyramid Lake, this surprisingly lush
16:11landscape has been coaxed from the desert
16:14with water from the Carson River.
16:16A series of reservoirs captures the water.
16:19A wide-ranging irrigation system delivers it to farms and homes.
16:24It's part of a statewide network designed
16:26to help nearly bone-dry Nevada make the most out
16:30of every drop of water it gets.
16:33And nothing else in that network, or just about anywhere
16:37else, does that job in a bigger way
16:40than this icon of American ingenuity, the Hoover Dam.
16:45The dam was constructed on the Colorado River, which
16:49flows from Colorado through Utah,
16:52and then along Nevada's border with Arizona,
16:56before continuing down California to Mexico.
17:04All too often, this powerful river
17:06was overflowing its banks, flooding fields,
17:09and causing millions of dollars in crop damage,
17:12while other farmers weren't getting the water they needed.
17:17So in 1929, the US government announced
17:20that it would try to tame this wild river by constructing
17:23what was then the world's largest dam.
17:27After scouting for a place to build it,
17:29surveyors settled on a narrow stretch of canyon,
17:32right here on the Nevada-Arizona border.
17:36Launched in the midst of the Great Depression,
17:38word of the Hoover Dam project triggered
17:40a flood of hungry workers from across the country
17:43into Nevada.
17:45Once again, a dusty corner of this state
17:48was beckoning opportunity seekers.
17:51But this time, they were just seeking jobs, not
17:54fortunes of silver and gold.
17:57And 21,000 men were lucky enough to get them.
18:01And a place to live, too, in a new government-built town
18:04called Boulder City.
18:08Every day, workers crowded into two-story buses
18:11and traveled down a brand new highway
18:13seven miles to the dam site.
18:18For the next five years, they labored here
18:20in up to 100-degree conditions.
18:23It wasn't just grueling.
18:25It was also extremely dangerous.
18:28Men known as high scalers clamored along the cliffs
18:31at the river's edge and then dangled down hundreds of feet
18:35on ropes to drill holes for dynamite that
18:38blasted away the canyon walls.
18:42Then the lowest-paid workers, called muckers,
18:46used shovels to scoop up the dynamited rock for removal.
18:50Dozens of others labored deep underground,
18:53drilling out four 3-quarter-of-a-mile tunnels
18:56that would temporarily divert the raging Colorado
18:58River around the site.
19:02Falling rocks, carbon monoxide, tough bosses, and long hours
19:07created dangerous conditions.
19:09At least 96 workers were killed on the job.
19:16Even some engineers had believed that the dam could never
19:19be built. But as the months wore on,
19:23the Hoover Dam's signature curved wall
19:25of reinforced concrete steadily began to rise.
19:32If it had been built in a single continuous pour,
19:35the concrete would have taken more than a century to cool.
19:38So workers had to build the 726-foot-high dam five feet
19:43at a time using individual buckets of concrete that
19:47sped down to them on cables every 78 seconds.
19:52It's still possible to see these individual pours etched
19:55in the face of the curve.
20:02When they were finally finished on March 1, 1936,
20:06two years ahead of schedule, their handiwork
20:09was hailed as an engineering marvel,
20:11the eighth wonder of the modern world.
20:15It was also an aesthetic triumph,
20:17thanks to its elegant proportions, futuristic design,
20:21and art deco details.
20:24It's visually stunning from the air.
20:27But that makes it easy to forget just
20:28how critical the engineering of the Hoover Dam remains today.
20:33If it ever gave way, it could unleash a wall of water
20:37so high it could flood an area the size of Connecticut
20:4010 feet deep, destroy vital irrigation systems
20:44across the American Southwest, and leave millions
20:47without drinking water.
20:50After September 11, 2001, officials
20:53decided that US Highway 93, which crossed the dam,
20:57posed too great a risk.
21:00To help keep this vital part of America's infrastructure safe,
21:04the US government commissioned another engineering marvel,
21:08the longest concrete arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere.
21:12The Michael Callahan Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge,
21:15named after a politician and a war hero,
21:18soars 890 feet above the Colorado River.
21:27It took nearly 10 years and $240 million to build.
21:32But when it opened in October 2010,
21:34truck traffic was finally diverted safely away
21:37from the Hoover Dam, helping ensure that this national
21:41treasure remains secure.
21:46But while the dam may be here for generations to come,
21:50the lake that it created and the communities
21:52its water sustains have a far less certain future.
21:59Lake Mead fills valleys as far away as 110 miles upstream
22:03from the dam.
22:05In places, it reaches 8 miles wide.
22:09Today, many take the presence of this rich desert resource
22:12for granted.
22:148 to 10 million of them boat, ski, and relax here every year.
22:20But some scientists say that they had better
22:22enjoy it while they can.
22:25Nevada has been experiencing years of drought.
22:29A bathtub ring on this narrow stretch of the lake
22:32reveals just how far Lake Mead has dropped.
22:37As it falls, new reefs and islands appear.
22:40And that's not all.
22:44In 2002, a series of mysterious outlines in the earth
22:48emerged from the receding lake.
22:51From the air, they look like the remains of ancient ruins
22:54or remnants of a Wild West fort.
22:58But old timers here know the truth.
23:01These are the crumbling foundations of a former town
23:04called St. Thomas.
23:07More than 70 years ago, it was evacuated
23:09when Lake Mead was created.
23:13Legend has it that the town's last resident rode away
23:16from his front porch in a boat just before his house
23:19was submerged.
23:21Today, he'd be able to walk back home.
23:26Scientists doubt that St. Thomas will ever be underwater again.
23:31But it might not be the last place around here
23:33to be abandoned.
23:35If Lake Mead continues to disappear,
23:39so too could this nearby metropolis, Las Vegas.
23:45The promise of water from Lake Mead
23:48helped spur the rapid development
23:49of this desert valley.
23:51It was once the fastest growing city in America.
23:56Vast subdivisions spread out in every direction
24:00and offer residents the perfect mirage
24:03that life in Vegas isn't really life in the desert at all.
24:07But homeowners here aren't just living on artificial lakes.
24:11They may also be living on borrowed time.
24:15As Lake Mead shrinks, so do the chances
24:18that Las Vegas, as most know it today, will survive.
24:23Experts predict that the lake could be dry altogether
24:26by 2021 unless water use is curtailed.
24:31And in a desert city where the flamboyant display of water
24:35helps drive the economy, figuring out where to cut back
24:39isn't so easy.
24:41And it's forcing Las Vegas to come up
24:43with some innovative solutions, including paying homeowners
24:47to replace their lawns with gravel,
24:50asking golf courses to dig up their turf,
24:54and recycling almost every drop of wastewater the city produces.
25:01Water from sinks, dishwashers, and toilets
25:04first gets sent here to this treatment plant.
25:07Once cleaned, it's released into Lake Mead.
25:10Then water from the lake is pumped back into the city
25:13to be used again for drinking water, lawns, and casinos.
25:20So far, water use here has dropped by nearly 20%
25:24in the seven years ending in 2008,
25:27even as the metropolitan area added almost a half a million
25:30people, making Las Vegas a desert survival success story,
25:36at least for now.
25:43A desolate road winds across Nevada's northern desert.
25:48This is US Route 50, also known as the loneliest
25:53road in America.
25:56It crosses the continent from Sacramento, California
25:59to Ocean City, Maryland.
26:03It's been said that anyone who travels
26:05the Nevada leg of this highway should
26:06make sure they have desert survival skills first.
26:12But if crossing Nevada's desert by car is tough enough,
26:16just imagine doing it alone on horseback in the 19th century.
26:21That's what riders of the famed Pony Express did.
26:26Long before today's overnight couriers existed,
26:29urgent messages were carried across the United
26:31States in saddlebags.
26:35From St. Joseph, Missouri, Pony Express riders
26:38headed west at breakneck speed.
26:42Changing horses along the way, they
26:44could make the 1,800-mile journey to Sacramento,
26:47California in just 10 days.
26:51That is, as long as they survived
26:54this stretch of desert.
27:00The only evidence left of this remarkable mail service
27:03are the remains of some of the 30 way stations
27:05along the Nevada route.
27:08Stations like this one at Sand Springs.
27:12These outposts kept the riders supplied
27:14with food, water, and fresh horses
27:16for every leg of the journey.
27:18Now, they're just ruins.
27:22New technology brought an end to the Pony Express.
27:25The arrival of the telegraph in 1861
27:28put America's first express courier service out of business
27:32after just 18 months.
27:36Today, new kinds of couriers ply Nevada's desert highways.
27:41And they're not here by chance.
27:43Many of them are carrying goods to and from one
27:46of the largest warehousing and distribution centers
27:49in America, in a little Nevada town called Fernley.
27:54It's home to Amazon.com's largest facility, which
27:58is as big as the decks of four aircraft carriers combined.
28:02Inside lie nine miles of conveyor belts
28:06that allow pickers and shippers to send out hundreds
28:08of thousands of packages a day.
28:11One reason Fernley has become a major distribution hub
28:14is because it's strategically located off Highway 80, which
28:17runs from New Jersey to San Francisco.
28:20An added incentive is that Nevada
28:23has no corporate income tax.
28:26But even though trucks have made express ponies obsolete
28:29in Nevada, here in the high desert,
28:32herds of wild horses, called mustangs, run free.
28:42To many, this species might seem like another example
28:44of Nevada's ancient natural bounty.
28:48But these animals aren't actually
28:49native to these hills.
28:51Conquistadors brought horses here from Europe
28:54to help them conquer the West.
28:56Now, descendants of those horses run wild in the state.
29:02With no natural predators, a herd of mustangs
29:05can double in size every four years.
29:10Studies conducted by the US Bureau of Land Management
29:13show that there are thousands more of these animals
29:15here than the land can support.
29:19Herds of mustangs trample thousands of acres of land
29:22a year, which threatens the habitats of a wide range
29:25of native species.
29:27Unless their numbers are kept in check,
29:29officials fear that the state's already fragile landscape
29:32could be permanently damaged.
29:36But when it comes to wild horses,
29:38emotions run deep.
29:40To many Americans, this imported species
29:43is now a symbol of the American West,
29:46which is why reducing their numbers by hunting
29:48is out of the question.
29:50Old-fashioned mustang wranglers, like those
29:53played by Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable in the 1961 film
29:58The Misfits, have mostly gone the way of the pony express.
30:03So officials regularly round up herds of wild mustangs
30:07to both protect them and the landscape.
30:12Here at a holding pen in Indian Lakes,
30:14hundreds of rounded-up horses wait for adoption.
30:18These are just a few of the tens of thousands
30:20that roam Nevada and other Western states.
30:25Animal rights activists call it cruel to keep them here,
30:28but oppose any sales that might put them
30:31in the hands of meat packers, which
30:33means these horses are stuck here, at least for now,
30:38all in the name of preserving Nevada's
30:40unique natural landscape, a landscape that's
30:48been remarkably transformed over hundreds of millions of years.
30:54There's no better place in Nevada
30:55to witness the beauty of this state's geological past
30:59than here, the Valley of Fire.
31:04Shifting sand dunes from the age of the dinosaurs
31:06have been trapped in time, creating
31:09red sandstone formations that rise above the desert floor.
31:16Flares from the rising sun earn the Valley of Fire its name,
31:21and help draw the attention of Hollywood producers,
31:24scouting for locations that look like other planets.
31:28Total Recall, Star Trek Generations,
31:31and The Transformers are just a few
31:33of the films that were shot in these otherworldly canyons.
31:40But while the Valley of Fire can seem peaceful,
31:44Nevada's geological history has been anything but quiet,
31:50at least if you look at it over tens of millions of years.
31:54Underneath this desert floor lies
31:57a cauldron of volcanic forces that
31:59makes Nevada the third most seismically active state
32:02in America, after California and Alaska.
32:09Bicycling through Red Rock Canyon,
32:11where Nevada's wilderness provides
32:12an awe-inspiring backdrop, it would be easy to forget
32:16that magnitude 7 earthquakes occur here,
32:19on average, every 30 years.
32:23And nothing has defined this state's natural and human
32:26history more than these seismic events.
32:33Evidence of the powerful forces simmering under the Nevada
32:36Desert can occasionally be spotted on the surface.
32:40Steam rises over a geothermal field
32:43just miles from Virginia City.
32:46The same boiling water that once threatened
32:48miners of the Comstock Lode is now a new source of energy.
32:54This geothermal field alone can generate enough energy
32:57to run 45,000 homes.
33:00To tap this valuable power source,
33:02engineers drilled down up to 6,000 feet
33:05and then let the rising steam power the generators.
33:10Geothermal is helping transform America's energy landscape.
33:15But what transformed Nevada from a land of lush forests
33:18and lakes to desert took much greater forces and millions
33:23of years.
33:28It all happened here in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain
33:31range that lies on the state's northwest boundary
33:34with California.
33:36400 million years ago, the Pacific Ocean
33:39still covered this region.
33:42But as recently as 5 million years ago,
33:45an ancient clashing of tectonic plates
33:47parted the waters, pushing upward,
33:50and the Sierra Nevada was born.
33:54Mount Rose, a former volcano, lies on the Nevada side
33:58of the range.
33:59Peaks like this one were high enough
34:01to stop moist Pacific air on the California side
34:04from traveling east.
34:07Over the millions of years that followed,
34:09Nevada's lakes disappeared.
34:11Its forests died.
34:16But luckily, the same forces that caused Nevada
34:19to become a desert also gave it this shimmering jewel.
34:29Nestled in the Sierras and straddling the border
34:32of Nevada and California, Lake Tahoe
34:35was first filled by melting glaciers
34:38and still contains some of the purest water in the world.
34:42In some spots, it reaches depths of 1,645 feet,
34:47making Lake Tahoe one of America's deepest lakes.
34:55At the waterline towers Cave Rock.
34:58It's the remnant of an active volcano
35:01and is now pierced by two highway tunnels.
35:05Members of the area's Washoe tribe of Native Americans,
35:08whose ancestors have lived on the banks of the lake
35:10for thousands of years, call it Dayak Wadapush,
35:14or Standing Greystone.
35:18To them, it's a sacred site.
35:21Their ancient stories tell of small beings
35:24called the Mitsumia, or water babies,
35:27who dwell in the rock's caves.
35:30To keep these powerful spirits at peace,
35:32the Washoe have always kept a respectful distance
35:35when passing the rock, which made
35:37the drilling of its road tunnels hard for them to take.
35:40The depth of Lake Tahoe means that its water
35:43is exceptionally cold, and many say
35:46that water babies aren't the only spirits who dwell here.
35:50In one of the last scenes of Francis Ford Coppola's film
35:53Godfather II, the character Fredo Corleone
35:57is shot in the head on a rowboat on the lake
35:59and his body dumped overboard.
36:02At the time, there were popular rumors
36:04that the depths of Lake Tahoe hold hundreds of millions
36:07of murder victims, perfectly preserved by the icy cold,
36:12still in their suits and ties, dumped here over the decades
36:15by the American mafia.
36:19Those rumors appeared to be true when a newspaper reported
36:23that Jacques Cousteau had journeyed
36:25to the bottom of the lake and then said
36:28that the world was not yet ready for what he had seen.
36:31But Cousteau had never actually been to the bottom of the lake
36:35Cousteau had never actually been to Lake Tahoe at all.
36:41What is true is that the mob often vacationed at Lake Tahoe.
36:48The Nevada side of the lake remains
36:50a perfect place for a getaway.
36:53Unlike the heavily developed California shore,
36:56the Nevada one is still amazingly wild,
37:00thanks in part to a San Franciscan named
37:03George Whittell Jr. In the early 1930s,
37:07Whittell used his inherited real estate fortune
37:10to buy up most of the Nevada side of the lake.
37:13In 1937, he built this house on its rocky shore.
37:18He named it Thunderbird and lived here
37:20for the rest of his life.
37:23Today, it's open for visitors.
37:26Whittell had planned to develop the land,
37:28but his love for natural beauty won out,
37:31and he instead retained it in its pristine condition
37:34until his death in 1969,
37:37after which it passed into public hands.
37:42Acres of green forests reach right down to the lake,
37:46a lush landscape that hints at what much of Nevada
37:49might have looked like hundreds of millions of years ago.
37:54The fiery forces that turned this state into a desert
37:58are also responsible for creating its vast deposits
38:00of gold, silver, and other valuable minerals,
38:05minerals that are still being mined today
38:08in amazing quantities.
38:12Every year, billions of dollars of gold and silver
38:15are still scraped out of Nevada soil.
38:19Today, Nevada is in the midst of the biggest gold boom
38:22in American history.
38:25More gold has been extracted here since 1998
38:28than in the California gold rush and Comstock load combined.
38:35These days, giant mining companies control the wealth
38:38buried beneath Nevada's hills.
38:41The days of lonely prospectors are pretty much gone.
38:45But that doesn't mean lonely men in Nevada have nothing to do.
38:50There's an entire multimillion-dollar industry
38:53here just for them.
38:56By law, it has to be tucked away,
38:59so it ends up behind old warehouses,
39:01down remote country roads,
39:03or even surrounded by auto junkyards.
39:07These are the places where the gold is mined.
39:11These are houses of prostitution,
39:14highly regulated but legal brothels.
39:18Bordellos have flourished openly in this state
39:20since the days of the Wild Wild West.
39:23Today, Nevada is the only state in the union that allows them.
39:28This one, the Moonlight Bunny Ranch,
39:31is probably the most famous,
39:33thanks to its role in the hit TV series, Cat House.
39:36But it's just one of dozens of cat houses
39:38operating in Nevada at any given time.
39:41More than 200 state-licensed prostitutes
39:43work in the state every day,
39:46and rake in $50 million a year.
39:49In spite of constant campaigns to close them,
39:52for now, Nevada's legal brothels are here to stay.
39:59But prostitution wasn't the first taboo
40:02to draw people to Nevada.
40:04For years, the state's legal brothels
40:07For years, the nearby city of Reno
40:10offered married couples a fast chance to untie the knot.
40:15In 1931, lawmakers here made it easier to get a divorce
40:19than anywhere else in America,
40:21which turned Reno into the country's divorce capital.
40:27Grand new hotels were quickly built
40:30to house the flood of would-be divorcees.
40:33One of the first, and the classiest at the time,
40:36was the El Cortez.
40:39It's hard to believe now,
40:41but it was also the tallest building in Reno
40:43when it opened in 1931.
40:47Hopeful wives paid a premium rate of $6 a night
40:50to recline in its Art Deco splendor,
40:53as they waited out the six weeks residency
40:55required for a Reno divorce.
41:00Once their wait was over,
41:01they headed to the Washoe County Courthouse
41:03to get their decree.
41:05Nearly 33,000 people got divorced here
41:08in the 1930s alone.
41:12After Life magazine published a photograph
41:14of a young woman kissing one of the courthouse's
41:16classical pillars for good luck,
41:18a new tradition was born.
41:21Marilyn Monroe did the same in the 1960s film,
41:24The Misfits.
41:28In the film, she also honored another
41:30Reno divorcee tradition.
41:32She went over to this bridge on the Truckee River
41:35and threw her wedding ring over the side.
41:39By then, the days of being Renovated,
41:42code for getting a divorce, were coming to an end,
41:46as marriage laws were being eased in every state.
41:51And within two decades, another Nevada city
41:54was overtaking Reno as the capital of sin,
41:59a place that would soon experience the thrilling rise
42:03and terrifying freefall of Nevada's booms and busts
42:08like no other.
42:14In 1946, mobster Bugsy Siegel came here to Las Vegas
42:19to make his mark by developing a new hotel
42:22called The Flamingo on a scrappy stretch
42:25of Highway 91 outside of town.
42:28Siegel spent $6 million to transform it
42:31into a pleasure palace.
42:33But by the time it turned a tidy profit, Bugsy was dead.
42:38Shot in the head while reading the morning newspaper,
42:40some say by his own associates, who thought he was skimming
42:43their investment.
42:46The Flamingo proved that fortunes could
42:48be made in this desert valley.
42:50And soon, more mob money flowed in.
42:53Casinos rose, and Highway 91 was reborn
42:56as the Las Vegas Strip.
42:59But it didn't look anything like this.
43:04Today's Las Vegas is the product of one of the biggest
43:07booms in Nevada history, a boom that kicked off in the 1960s
43:13after the Nevada legislature legalized corporate ownership
43:16of Sin City's casinos.
43:21In 1967, corporate raider Kurt Kerkorian
43:25pumped a hot tub of gas into the city.
43:28Kurt Korkorian pumped $100 million into the city,
43:32buying up the MGM Grand, which he has since rebuilt
43:35for more than a billion.
43:39As more money flowed into Vegas from Wall Street,
43:42the mob moved out.
43:45In 1989, junk bonds backed the construction
43:48of Steve Wynn's $630 million Mirage,
43:52the most expensive casino in the world at the time.
43:55Then staked his claim to Las Vegas glory
43:57with nightly pyrotechnics that still stop
44:00tourists in their tracks today.
44:04As visitors poured in and gambling money flowed,
44:07it seemed like Wynn's stunning showplace
44:09could never be topped until he topped it himself in 1998
44:15with this outrageous water show that
44:17rivaled the Mirage's fire.
44:21The Bellagio was more opulent, more expensive,
44:24and more impressive than anything
44:26the Strip had ever seen.
44:30But Wynn wasn't the only one looking for new ways
44:32to make his mark on the Strip in the go-go 90s.
44:35In 1993, the Luxor had put its own unique stamp
44:40on the Las Vegas skyline with this sleek glass pyramid.
44:44The light that shoots from its point
44:46isn't just the brightest in Las Vegas.
44:48At 42.3 billion candle power, it's
44:52the strongest beam of light in the world.
44:57That same year, at the height of the Las Vegas boom,
45:00a small-time casino owner named Bob Stupak
45:03conceived of the city's newest icon, the Stratosphere.
45:09It's America's tallest freestanding observation
45:11tower topped by carnival rides.
45:15But even this was bought out by a Wall Street firm.
45:19Thrill seekers scream with joy and terror
45:22while being dangled from its top.
45:24But that's not all they do.
45:27Every few minutes on busy weekend nights,
45:29a tourist steps out onto a ledge high over the Strip
45:34and prepares to jump from the tower.
45:37After paying more than $100, each jumper
45:40is strapped to a high-speed descent wire,
45:42steps out into the abyss, and then plummets 855 feet.
45:54It's not a ride for the faint-hearted.
45:56But going into free fall is nothing new in Nevada.
46:01Every great economic boom in the state's history
46:04has been matched by a bust equal in size.
46:09And the latest Las Vegas boom is no exception.
46:14The Strip by night is not quite the same as the Strip by day.
46:19Signs of economic hard times are everywhere.
46:23These are the bones of what was supposed
46:25to be Nevada's next big casino, the Echelon.
46:31If this $5 billion project remains on hold,
46:34it may have to be demolished.
46:37The investors in this tower, the $3 billion
46:40Fountain Blue Hotel, went belly up before it was completed.
46:46But even these projects pale in comparison
46:48to this, an 18 million square foot
46:51complex of glass towers, shops, hotels, and casinos
46:55in the center of the Strip.
46:57It's called City Center.
47:00In 2005, investors were so convinced that the Las Vegas
47:04boom would continue, they committed
47:07to a nearly $9 billion deal to build it.
47:11City Center was intended to create
47:13a newly hip and urban destination on the Strip.
47:16Star architects were brought in.
47:19Helmut Jahn created these leaning glass towers of condos.
47:25Lord Norman Foster designed this oval-shaped tower.
47:30And Daniel Leapskin came up with the aluminum-clad retail
47:33and entertainment center that holds it all together.
47:38But just after City Center was built,
47:41the American economy went for a wild ride
47:44and took the development's investors along with it.
47:49Behind its glamorous facade, apartments remain empty.
47:55And the Norman Foster Tower will have to be taken down.
47:58Shoddy contracting work has made it unstable.
48:03But Las Vegas' latest bust reaches far beyond the Strip.
48:09Once, this valley was being developed
48:11at a rate of two acres an hour.
48:14By 2010, one out of every nine homes
48:17was threatened by foreclosure.
48:20These empty lots may remain unbuilt for a very long time.
48:24These days, the booms and busts of the city and its casinos
48:28are attractions in themselves.
48:31Each one of these works of advertising art
48:34is a time capsule from a past Las Vegas
48:37where anything seemed possible.
48:40Today, they are lovingly preserved
48:42in a popular park called the Neon Boneyard.
48:47Las Vegas' economic future may be a big question
48:51Las Vegas' economic future may be a big question mark in the sky,
48:56but that doesn't mean this state's boom times are over.
49:00You never know over which dusty hill
49:03the next gold rush will happen.
49:06Some say it's already happening here.
49:09Just outside Boulder City, something
49:12shimmers on the horizon.
49:14But this isn't a desert mirage.
49:17It's a solar plant.
49:21It may look like it's been built in the middle of nowhere,
49:24but it's more than 700,000 solar panels
49:27are perfectly positioned to maximize the sun's rays.
49:33It may look like cutting-edge technology from the air,
49:36but right next door, they're trying out an even newer way
49:39to get energy from the sun.
49:42This is Nevada Solar One.
49:47Unlike standard solar plants that
49:49use panels to capture the sun's energy
49:51and convert it directly to electricity,
49:53here, 182,000 mirrors spread over 400 acres
49:59are being used to concentrate the sun's heat
50:03and then use it to turn liquid to steam to power
50:06electricity-creating generators, proving
50:09that today, energy companies are the prospectors of old,
50:13seeking new ways to tap Nevada's natural resources
50:17and turn them into silver and gold,
50:21just as people have been doing here
50:23ever since the first thirsty settlers discovered
50:27this arid land.
50:47♪♪