It might seem surprising that the road in North Las Vegas named for Tom Williams, who created that city, is such a short and unheralded thoroughfare. It may be more surprising that an elementary school is also named for the man who championed having as little government as possible in the new city and keeping out black people.

If you go to school at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, fly into McCarran International Airport or party on the Las Vegas Strip, you're technically not in Las Vegas — you're in Clark County.

At age 12, Mark Brandenburg mopped the basement floors at Las Vegas' first casino: the Golden Gate at 1 Fremont St. Nearly 50 years later, he has his own office in the building as its president and shareholder.

Our friends in Boulder City—and around Nevada and Arizona and California—are justly proud of Hoover Dam. Its construction made the growth of these areas possible, or at least more possible. Certainly, Las Vegas couldn’t have the population it has without the water from Lake Mead. And we wouldn’t be having the debates we’re having about water and our future, either.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Kirk Kerkorian changed the way Vegas did business. The founder of MGM Resorts International died yesterday at his home in California. NPR's Sam Sanders reports.

How many people can say they built the world’s biggest hotel three times? Kirk Kerkorian can.

UNLV history professor Michael Green just published Nevada: A History of the Silver State, the most comprehensive text of its kind in decades. Though he’s considered a foremost expert on Nevada’s past, even Green encountered a few surprises during his research.

Michael Green knows them all. The scalawags, the thieves, the killers, the saints, the sinners, the heroes, the odd fellows and just about everyone, and everything, that had or has something to do with Nevada’s evolution.