Boulder City

Boulder City is one of only two places in Nevada where gambling is illegal, and that distinction traces directly to its founding. The federal government built Boulder City in nineteen thirty-one as a company town for the workers constructing Hoover Dam. The Bureau of Reclamation needed a sober, orderly workforce for one of the most dangerous engineering projects in American history, so it prohibited alcohol and gambling within the townsite.

At its peak the population reached nearly seven thousand workers and their families. After the dam was finished in nineteen thirty-five, the federal government retained ownership of the city until nineteen fifty-nine, and the city incorporated in nineteen sixty. The gambling prohibition was carried forward by voter choice and has been renewed several times since, making Boulder City an intentional holdout in a state defined by casinos.