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Arizona versus Nevada:
- Arizona modern population inhabitants are much older, Tucson was home to a Jesuit missionary establishment as of 1692 and Phoenix by American farmers in 1867.
- Las Vegas on the other hand was not settled until 1905 when a railroad connecting Las Vegas to Los Angeles was built. Reno had a small pioneer population in 1850 and was actually larger than Vegas in 1950 with 32,000 people but did not grow as fast as the sunbelt cities from that point on.
Phoenix Versus Las Vegas:
These cities get compared all the time, in reality they're really not all that similar. My hunch is most of the US population thinks of them as 2 big, hot desert based cities. But the reality is they're in different deserts and grew up very differently. Phoenix is in the Salt River Valley bed, the river created fertile soil which was an opportunity for extensive year-round farming which was the reason for early settlers to land here. Las Vegas started as a train station stop and as we all know adopted gambling to grow. They really have little in common other than being in deserts.
- By 1910 Vegas had 800 people and Phoenix had 11,000
- By 1950 Vegas had 25,000 and Phoenix 107,000
- In the early days Las Vegas was built on gambling, Phoenix was built on cattle, cotton, citrus, and climate with the 5th c of copper not really occurring that close to Phoenix.
- During world war II Phoenix was a hotbed of military activity There were 3 Air Force fields in the area, Luke Air Force Base, Williams Field Air force Base and Falcon Field, this combined with two large pilot training camps Thunderbird 1 and 2 plus a huge desert training center brought in thousands of people to Phoenix.
- After the war, 1000's and 1000's of military members knew about Phoenix and decided to settle in here, in 1950 Phoenix had 107K people by 1970 that number was 600K, Vegas in that period went from 25K to 125K.
From a metropolitan area standpoint, Phoenix is much more family-friendly than Las Vegas. In the Las Vegas metropolitan area, it is very common to observe casinos, strip clubs, pawn shops, adult video stores and pain management clinics among other less-than-desirable business establishments everywhere, even in allegedly “nice” areas such as Henderson and Spring Valley, for example. Sorry, there is absolutely no way in Hell that I would raise my children in a community with gas stations that feature slot machines and grocery stores that have caged and monitored liquor aisles such as the Vons store on Horizon Ridge Parkway in Henderson, for example. Equivalent suburbs in the Phoenix metropolitan area are perceivably safer and more upscale, which makes those communities more attractive to families with children, a cohort that is a driving force of rapid population growth in the Sun Belt states.
That's a really good point, I do know friends with families who have chose to live in Las Vegas and seem to do okay with it, but what you described above would keep me away even without a family to raise. Being in Phoenix it's very easy to take a 35 minute flight up there for the weekend and enjoy the entertainment, but I always find myself ready to leave after a few nights.
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