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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.
01:16♪♪♪
01:31♪♪♪
01:41♪♪♪
01:51In 1852, two brothers, Ethan and Hosea Grosch,
01:56arrived in these barren hills in western Nevada.
02:00At the time, this was pretty much the middle of nowhere.
02:05Dreaming of gold, they pulled out their pickaxes
02:08and started digging.
02:10Five years later, they made an earth-shattering discovery.
02:15A motherload of silver ore,
02:17and under that, huge deposits of gold.
02:21But before the brothers could register their claim,
02:27one died from a wound from his pickaxe,
02:30and the other left for California.
02:34That's when another prospector named Henry Comstock
02:37came to the rescue.
02:39Soon these hills were known far and wide as the Comstock Lode.
02:45News of the Lode quickly spread across the nation,
02:48and thousands of would-be millionaires
02:51flooded into this dusty corner of Nevada.
02:55Little did most of them know,
02:57they would soon be risking their lives
02:59for the gold they had found.
03:02In the early 1800s,
03:04the Comstock Lode was the largest gold mine in the world.
03:09Risking their lives and slaving away for others
03:12deep under the Nevada desert.
03:16Unlike California's gold that could be picked out of streams,
03:19here, the veins of silver and gold
03:22were buried far underground,
03:25which meant that men had to dig mines
03:27that were deeper and more dangerous than any before,
03:30like this one that reached down 3,250 feet.
03:36As miners descended,
03:37boiling spring water caused the temperature in the tunnels
03:40to rise higher and higher the deeper they went.
03:44Tools got so hot they could scorch skin.
03:48At the bottom, clouds of steam filled the tunnels,
03:52and underground floods threatened to boil the miners alive.
03:57Men who had come to Nevada in search of easy money
04:02ended up sweating and dying.
04:05Ended up sweating their lives away
04:06in the depths of other men's mines.
04:09Even though some of them earned up to $4 a day,
04:13top wages in those days.
04:17But between shifts, there were plenty of chances
04:19to spend the money they earned.
04:23Along with the miners, merchants and businessmen arrived,
04:26knowing that boom times bring boom towns.
04:31By the early 1860s,
04:32the prospector's primitive campsite,
04:35known as Virginitown,
04:37was being transformed into Virginia City.
04:41Today, it's one of the best-preserved
04:43old mining towns in America.
04:45Back then, it was one of the finest cities
04:48between Denver and San Francisco.
04:52Some merchants made fortunes feeding, housing,
04:54and entertaining the miners.
04:57Opera houses, saloons, opium dens,
05:00and brothels once lined its streets
05:03and helped empty miners' pockets.
05:06The little they had left often went to renting a room
05:08at one of the local hotels.
05:11One of the first built around 1860 was the Gold Hill.
05:15It's now the oldest operating hotel in Nevada.
05:19But back then, many of the miners who checked in
05:22at the Gold Hill dreaming of riches
05:24often checked out broke,
05:26and broken by their time in the Comstock Mines.
05:32One miner avoided that fate
05:34by turning his time in Virginia City
05:37into another kind of fame and fortune.
05:40After just a few months here,
05:42Samuel Clemens figured out that prospecting wasn't his thing.
05:47So he started working for a newspaper
05:49called the Territorial Enterprise
05:51in a brick building downtown.
05:54By the time Clemens left Virginia City,
05:56he was well on his way to fame and fortune as Mark Twain,
05:59thanks to a series of articles he wrote
06:01under his new byline.
06:04Today, the old newspaper building
06:05is now the Mark Twain Museum.
06:10Twain later described what it was like
06:12to live in Nevada's first boomtown.
06:16The flush times were in magnificent flower.
06:19The city of Virginia claimed a population of 15 to 18,000,
06:24and all day long, half of this little army
06:26swarmed the streets like bees,
06:29and the other half swarmed among the drifts
06:31and tunnels of the Comstock,
06:33hundreds of feet down on the earth
06:35directly under those same streets.
06:38Often we felt our chairs jar
06:41and heard the faint boom of a blast
06:43down in the bowels of the earth under the office.
06:49Some men in Virginia City were getting fabulously rich.
06:54One of them was George Hearst.
06:59Hearst built this house in Virginia City
07:02while earning the first few million dollars of a fortune
07:05that would allow his son to build
07:06California's famed Hearst Castle.
07:10Later, industrialist John Mackey lived here
07:13and earned millions more.
07:17He and the Comstock's other newly minted tycoons
07:20became 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.
07:34In 1868, a banker named William Sherwin
07:38built a railroad to do that job.
07:42Called the Virginia and Truckee Railroad,
07:44it still carries passengers today.
07:49Sherwin's trains brought raw ore from the mines
07:51down to the smelters that purified it
07:54into silver and gold, chugging back up again
07:57with the lumber and other supplies
07:59that kept Virginia City booming
08:02and ferrying passengers to and from
08:04the transcontinental rail lines in Reno.
08:11But for the Silver Kings,
08:13the V&T's most important destination
08:15was a little town just 15 miles to the southwest.
08:20In 1863, Congress had picked tiny Carson City
08:24as the site of a new U.S. mint
08:27designed to stamp the gold and silver
08:28flooding out of the Comstock into 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.
09:03This high-security facility
09:05has been home to Nevada's death row.
09:10Located next to a quarry,
09:11the prison's early inmates had to mine the stone
09:14used to build their own cell blocks,
09:16as well as the mint and other buildings
09:18needed by a new state capitol.
09:22No building in Carson City put that stone to better use
09:25than the one crowned by this silvery dome.
09:28♪♪
09:35Construction of Nevada's first statehouse began in 1870.
09:40The next year, the legislature met here for the first time,
09:44gathering under this painted silver dome
09:46to govern the thriving Silver State.
09:50At 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.
10:13The 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
10:25had been resold for millions.
10:28It's believed that Comstock, penniless,
10:31put a revolver to his head and pulled the trigger.
10:34♪♪
10:39During 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
11:01to less than 4,000 by the turn of the century.
11:05Blocks of its historic buildings lay abandoned for decades.
11:09Only to be revived in the middle of the 20th century
11:12by a new boom in tourism.
11:15♪♪
11:19These days, the theme park atmosphere here
11:21can make the tough times of Virginia City's past
11:24seem like ancient history.
11:27But this hasn't been the last dusty corner of Nevada
11:30to be transformed by a boom of epic proportions
11:34or to be hit by the hard times that followed.
11:39♪♪
11:43These are the twisting dunes of Nevada's Sand Mountain.
11:48They look like the spine of an ancient ocean creature
11:52beached on this desert land.
11:56From above, they appear as waves on a sea.
12:01But for miles around Sand Mountain,
12:03there's no water to be found.
12:06Nevada's parched landscape appears to stretch on
12:09for eternity.
12:11Today, this is America's driest state
12:14with an average rainfall of just seven inches per year.
12:19It's easy to imagine that this land has always looked this way,
12:23even in its prehistoric past.
12:27Back during the last ice age,
12:29much of western Nevada was actually covered
12:32by a layer of ice.
12:34Western Nevada was 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,
12:48Lake Lahontan began to evaporate.
12:51Most of the lake disappeared.
12:56But luckily, part of it has survived
13:00and is now a stunning desert oasis.
13:03♪♪
13:09Nearly 10,000 years ago,
13:11Native Americans from the Paiute tribe
13:13arrived in this unforgiving desert.
13:16♪♪
13:20For generations, they drank the lake's water,
13:23ate its fish,
13:25and shared its bounty with flocks of white pelicans.
13:28♪♪
13:32Every year, these beautiful birds return
13:35from Southern California and Baja, Mexico,
13:38to summer a nest on Anaho Island in the center of the lake.
13:43They're still coming back today,
13:46but their refuge was almost destroyed
13:48in the early part of the 20th century.
13:51It was only saved thanks to a hard-fought legal battle
13:55waged by their Paiute neighbors,
13:58a battle with roots that go back even farther.
14:02To 1844, when famed explorer John Fremont
14:06and scout Kit Carson arrived here on their way to the west.
14:09♪♪
14:11Fremont mapped the shoreline
14:14and named these waters Pyramid Lake
14:16after a rock formation just offshore.
14:19Soon, settlers were following his trail.
14:24With their arrival,
14:25life on the lake's ancient shores began 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
14:42to become yet another dry Nevada lakebed.
14:46♪♪
14:48But then, the Paiute discovered the cause of the lake's decline,
14:53a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project
14:55called the Derby Diversion Dam.
14:58It blocked the Truckee and funneled much of its water
15:01away from the ancient streambed 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,
15:18who depended on the river's water.
15:20♪♪
15:22Starting in the 1960s, the Paiute fought back,
15:26demanding that the Truckee's water be rediverted
15:29to their dying lake.
15:33The 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,
15:44who can once again rely on its bounty.
15:49And Anaho Island is again home to one of the largest
15:52nesting colonies of pelicans in the U.S.
15:59But Nevada's desperate need for water continues,
16:03as do efforts to engineer a solution.
16:08To the south of Pyramid Lake,
16:10this surprisingly lush landscape has been coaxed
16:13from the desert with water from the Carson River.
16:16A series of reservoirs captures the water.
16:19A wide-ranging irrigation system delivers it
16:22to farms and homes.
16:24It's part of a statewide network designed to help
16:27nearly bone-dry Nevada make the most
16:30out of every drop of water it gets.
16:33And nothing else in that network,
16:35or just about anywhere else,
16:37does that job in a bigger way
16:40than this icon of American ingenuity,
16:43the Hoover Dam.
16:45The dam was constructed on the Colorado River,
16:49which flows from Colorado through Utah,
16:52and then along Nevada's border with Arizona,
16:56before continuing down California to Mexico.
17:00♪♪
17:04All too often, this powerful river was overflowing
17:07its banks, flooding fields,
17:09and causing millions of dollars in crop damage,
17:13while other farmers weren't getting the water they needed.
17:17So in 1929, the U.S. government announced
17:20that it would try to tame this wild river
17:22by constructing what 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.
17:37Launched in the midst of the Great Depression,
17:39word of the Hoover Dam project triggered a flood
17:41of hungry workers from across the country into Nevada.
17:45Once again, a dusty corner of the state
17:48was beckoning opportunity seekers.
17:51But this time, they were just seeking jobs,
17:54not fortunes of silver and gold.
17:57And 21,000 men were lucky enough to get them.
18:01And a place to live, too,
18:03in a new government-built town called Boulder City.
18:08Every day, workers crowded into two-story buses
18:11and traveled down a brand-new highway
18:14seven miles to the dam site.
18:18For the next five years,
18:19they labored here in up to 100-degree conditions.
18:23It wasn't just grueling.
18:25It was also extremely dangerous.
18:28Men known as high scalers
18:30clambered along the cliffs at the river's edge
18:33and then dangled down hundreds of feet on ropes
18:36to drill holes for dynamite
18:38that blasted away the canyon walls.
18:43Then, 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 three-quarter-of-a-mile tunnels
18:56that would temporarily divert
18:57the raging Colorado River around the site.
19:02Falling rocks, carbon monoxide,
19:05tough bosses, and long hours created dangerous conditions.
19:09At least 96 workers were killed on the job.
19:16Even some engineers had believed
19:18that the dam could never be built.
19:21But 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
19:42five feet at a time,
19:44using individual buckets of concrete
19:47that sped down to them on cables every 78 seconds.
19:52It's still possible to see these individual pours
19:55etched in the face of the curve.
20:02When they were finally finished on March 1, 1936,
20:06two years ahead of schedule,
20:08their handiwork was hailed as an engineering marvel,
20:11the eighth wonder of the modern world.
20:14It was also an aesthetic triumph,
20:17thanks to its elegant proportions,
20:19futuristic design, and Art Deco details.
20:24It's visually stunning from the air,
20:27but that makes it easy to forget
20:28just how critical the engineering of the Hoover Dam
20:31remains today.
20:33If it ever gave way,
20:35it could unleash a wall of water so high
20:38it could flood an area the size of Connecticut 10 feet deep,
20:42destroy vital irrigation systems
20:44across the American Southwest,
20:46and leave millions without drinking water.
20:50After September 11, 2001,
20:53officials decided that U.S. Highway 93,
20:56which crossed the dam, posed too great a risk.
21:00To help keep this vital part
21:01of America's infrastructure safe,
21:04the U.S. government commissioned another engineering marvel,
21:08the longest concrete arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere.
21:12The Michael Callahan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge,
21:16named 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,
21:35truck traffic was finally diverted safely away
21:37from the Hoover Dam,
21:39helping ensure that this national treasure
21:42remains secure.
21:46But while the dam may be here for generations to come,
21:50the lake that it created
21:51and the communities its water sustains
21:54have a far less certain future.
21:57Lake Mead fills valleys as far away
21:59as 110 miles upstream from the dam.
22:02In places, it reaches 8 miles wide.
22:06Today, many take the presence
22:08of this rich desert resource for granted.
22:11Eight to 10 million of them boat, ski,
22:14and relax here every year.
22:17But some scientists say
22:19that they had better enjoy it while they can.
22:22Nevada has one of the largest lakes in the world,
22:26and Nevada has been experiencing years of drought.
22:30A bathtub ring on this narrow stretch of the lake
22:33reveals just how far Lake Mead has dropped.
22:37As it falls, new reefs and islands appear.
22:41And that's not all.
22:45In 2002, a series of mysterious outlines in the earth
22:49emerged from the receding lake.
22:52From the air, they look like the remains of ancient ruins
22:55of a Wild West fort.
22:58But old-timers here know the truth.
23:01These are the crumbling foundations
23:03of a former town called St. Thomas.
23:07More than 70 years ago,
23:08it was evacuated when Lake Mead was created.
23:13Legend has it that the town's last resident
23:15rowed away from his front porch in a boat
23:18just before his house was submerged.
23:22Today, he'd be able to walk back home.
23:26Scientists doubt that St. Thomas
23:28will ever be underwater again,
23:31but it might not be the last place around here
23:33to be abandoned.
23:36If Lake Mead continues to disappear,
23:39so too could this nearby metropolis, Las Vegas.
23:46The promise of water from Lake Mead
23:48helped spur the rapid development
23:49of this desert valley.
23:52It was once the fastest-growing city in America.
23:57Vast 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.
24:08But homeowners here aren't just living on artificial lakes.
24:11They may also be living on borrowed time.
24:16As Lake Mead shrinks, so do the chances
24:19that 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
24:34of water helps drive the economy,
24:37figuring out where to cut back isn't so easy
24:41and is forcing Las Vegas to come up
24:43with some innovative solutions,
24:46including paying homeowners to replace their lawns
24:49with gravel, asking golf courses to dig up their turf,
24:55and recycling almost every drop of wastewater
24:57the 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.
25:11Then water from the lake is pumped back into the city
25:13to be used again for drinking water, lawns, and casinos.
25:21So 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
25:29a million people, making Las Vegas a desert survival success
25:34story, at least for now.
25:43A desolate road winds across Nevada's northern desert.
25:48This is US Route 50, also known as the loneliest road in America.
25:56It crosses the continent from Sacramento, California
26:00to 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.
26:09But if crossing Nevada's desert by car is tough enough,
26:13just imagine doing it alone on horseback in the 19th century.
26:18That's what riders of the famed Pony Express did.
26:22Long before today's overnight couriers existed,
26:26urgent messages were carried across the United States
26:29in saddlebags.
26:32From St. Joseph, Missouri, Pony Express riders
26:35headed west as they crossed the desert.
26:38From St. Joseph, Missouri, Pony Express riders headed west
26:41at breakneck speed.
26:44Changing horses along the way, they
26:46could make the 1,800-mile journey to Sacramento,
26:49California in just 10 days.
26:54That is, as long as they survived
26:56this stretch of desert.
27:02The only evidence left of this remarkable mail service
27:05are the remains of some of the 30 way stations
27:08like 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.
27:19Now, 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
27:48centers in 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
28:16off Highway 80, which runs 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
28:45of Nevada's ancient natural bounty.
28:48But these animals aren't actually
28:50native to these hills.
28:51Conquistadors brought horses here from Europe
28:54to help them conquer the West.
28:57Now, 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, emotions run deep.
29:40To many Americans, this imported species
29:43is now a symbol of the American West,
29:45which is why reducing their numbers by hunting
29:48is out of the question.
29:50Old-fashioned mustang wranglers, like those played
29:54by Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable in the 1961 film
29:57The 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.
30:47A landscape that's been remarkably transformed
30:50over 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
31:19its name, and help draw the attention of Hollywood
31:23producers scouting for locations that
31:25look 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
32:03in 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
32:17that 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.
32:47The same boiling water that once threatened
32:49miners 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 drill 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
33:19and lakes to desert took much greater forces
33:23and millions of years.
33:28It all happened here in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain
33:32range 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.
34:12Its forests died.
34:16But luckily, the same forces that caused Nevada
34:19to become a desert also gave it this shimmering jewel.
34:28Nestled in the Sierras and straddling the border
34:31of Nevada and California, Lake Tahoe
34:35was first filled by melting glaciers
34:37and 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.
34:59It'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.
35:44The depth of Lake Tahoe means that its water
35:46is exceptionally cold, and many say
35:49that water babies aren't the only spirits who dwell here.
35:53In one of the last scenes of Francis Ford Coppola's film,
35:56Godfather II, the character Fredo Corleone
36:00is shot in the head on a rowboat on the lake
36:03and his body dumped overboard.
36:05At the time, there were popular rumors
36:08that the depths of Lake Tahoe hold hundreds of murder
36:11victims, perfectly preserved by the icy cold,
36:15still in their suits and ties, dumped here over the decades
36:19by the American mafia.
36:23Those rumors appeared to be true when a newspaper reported
36:26that Jacques Cousteau had journeyed
36:28to the bottom of the lake, and then
36:30said that the world was not yet ready for what he had seen.
36:35But Cousteau 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, after which
37:38it passed into public hands.
37:42Acres of green forests reach right down
37:45to the lake, a lush landscape that
37:48hints at what much of Nevada might have looked like hundreds
37:51of millions of years ago.
37:53The fiery forces that turned this state into a desert
37:57are also responsible for creating its vast deposits
37:59of gold, silver, and other valuable minerals,
38:04minerals that are still being mined today
38:07in amazing quantities.
38:11Every year, billions of dollars of gold and silver
38:14are still scraped out of Nevada's soil.
38:17Today, Nevada is in the midst of the biggest gold
38:20boom in American history.
38:22More gold has been extracted here since 1998
38:26than in the California gold rush and Comstock load combined.
38:32These days, giant mining companies
38:35control the wealth buried beneath Nevada's hills.
38:38The days of lonely prospectors and miners
38:41are over.
38:43But that doesn't mean lonely men in Nevada have nothing to do.
38:48There is an entire multimillion-dollar industry
38:50here just for them.
38:53By law, it has to be tucked away,
38:56so it ends up behind old warehouses,
38:59down remote country roads, or even
39:02surrounded by auto junkyards.
39:05And if you're looking for a job, you
39:07have to find a job, and you have to find a job.
39:10Or even surrounded by auto junkyards.
39:14These are houses of prostitution,
39:17highly regulated but legal brothels.
39:21Bordellos have flourished openly in this state
39:23since the days of the wild, wild west.
39:26Today, Nevada is the only state in the union that allows them.
39:31This one, the Moonlight Bunny Ranch,
39:33is probably the most famous, thanks to its role
39:36in the hit TV series, Cat House.
39:39But it's just one of dozens of cat houses
39:41operating in Nevada at any given time.
39:44More than 200 state-licensed prostitutes
39:47work in the state every day, and rake in $50 million a year.
39:53In spite of constant campaigns to close them,
39:55for now, Nevada's legal brothels are here to stay.
40:03But prostitution wasn't the first taboo
40:05to draw people to Nevada.
40:08For 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
40:18to get a divorce than anywhere else in America,
40:22which turned Reno into the country's divorce capital.
40:28Grand new hotels were quickly built to house
40:31the flood of would-be divorcees.
40:34One of the first, and the classiest at the time,
40:37was the El Cortez.
40:39It's hard to believe now, but it was also
40:42the tallest building in Reno when 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 required
40:56for a Reno divorce.
41:00Once their wait was over, they headed to the Washoe County
41:03Courthouse to get their decree.
41:05Nearly 33,000 people got divorced here
41:08in the 1930s alone.
41:12After Life magazine published a photograph of a young woman
41:15kissing one of the courthouse's classical pillars
41:17for good luck, a new tradition was born.
41:21Marilyn Monroe did the same in the 1960s film, The Misfits.
41:28In the film, she also honored another Reno divorcee
41:31tradition.
41:33She 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 free fall of Nevada's booms
42:07and busts like no other.
42:14In 1946, mobster Bugsy Siegel came here to Las Vegas
42:19to make his mark by developing a new hotel called The Flamingo
42:24on a scrappy stretch of 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, casinos rose,
42:54and Highway 91 was reborn as 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
43:08booms 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.
43:22In 1967, corporate raider Kurt Kerkorian
43:25pumped a hot air balloon into Las Vegas.
43:28He pumped $100 million into the city,
43:31buying up the MGM Grand, which he has since rebuilt
43:35for more than a billion.
43:38As more money flowed into Vegas from Wall Street,
43:41the mob moved out.
43:44In 1989, junk bonds backed the construction of Steve Wynn's
43:48$630 million Mirage, the most expensive casino
43:53in the world at the time.
43:54Wynn then staked his claim to Las Vegas glory
43:57with nightly pyrotechnics that still stop tourists
44:01in their tracks today.
44:04As visitors poured in and gambling money flowed,
44:08it seemed like Wynn's stunning showplace
44:10could never be topped until he topped it himself in 1998
44:15with this outrageous water show that
44:18rivaled 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.
44:36In 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.
44:49At 42.3 billion candle power, it's the strongest beam
44:53of 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
45:04conceived of the city's newest icon, the Stratosphere.
45:09It's America's tallest freestanding observation tower
45:12topped 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.
45:53It's not a ride for the faint-hearted.
45:56But going into free fall is nothing new in Nevada.
46:00Every great economic boom in the state's history
46:03has been matched by a bust equal in size.
46:09And the latest Las Vegas boom is no exception.
46:13The Strip by night is not quite the same as the Strip by day.
46:18Signs of economic hard times are everywhere.
46:22These are the bones of what was supposed to be Nevada's
46:26next big casino, the Echelon.
46:29If this $5 billion project remains on hold,
46:33it may have to be demolished.
46:36The investors in this tower, the $3 billion Fountain Blue Hotel,
46:41went belly up before it was completed.
46:45But even these projects pale in comparison
46:47to this, an 18-million-square-foot complex
46:51of glass towers, shops, hotels, and casinos
46:54in the center of the Strip.
46:56It's called City Center.
46:59In 2005, investors were so convinced that the Las Vegas
47:03boom would continue, they committed to a nearly $9
47:07billion deal to build it.
47:10City Center was intended to create a newly hip
47:13and urban destination on the Strip.
47:15Star architects were brought in.
47:18Helmut Jahn created these leaning glass towers of condos.
47:24Lord Norman Foster designed this oval-shaped tower.
47:29And Daniel Leapskin came up with the aluminum-clad retail
47:32and entertainment center that holds it all together.
47:37But just after City Center was built,
47:40the American economy went for a wild ride
47:43and took the development's investors along with it.
47:48Behind its glamorous facade, apartments remain empty.
47:53And the Norman Foster Tower will have to be taken down.
47:57Shoddy contracting work has made it unstable.
48:02But Las Vegas' latest bust reaches far beyond the Strip.
48:08Once, this valley was being developed
48:10at a rate of two acres an hour.
48:13By 2010, one out of every nine homes
48:17was threatened by foreclosure.
48:19These empty lots may remain unbuilt for a very long time.
48:27These days, the booms and busts of the city and its casinos
48:31are attractions in themselves.
48:34Each one of these works of advertising art
48:36is a time capsule from a past Las Vegas
48:39where anything seemed possible.
48:43Today, they are lovingly preserved in a popular park
48:47called the Neon Boneyard.
48:51Las Vegas' economic future may be a big question mark
48:55in the sky, but that doesn't mean this state's boom
48:58times are over.
49:00You never know over which dusty hill the next gold
49:03rush will happen.
49:06Some say it's already happening here.
49:09Just outside Boulder City, something
49:12shimmers on the horizon.
49:15But 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 electricity
50:07creating generators, proving that today, energy companies
50:12are the prospectors of old, seeking new ways
50:15to 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
50:26discovered this arid land.
50:41♪♪
50:52♪♪