Las Vegas awoke one morning to find itself in the public eye. Destiny had so decreed when it permitted Las Vegas to become the town nearest to the proposed dam site at Boulder Canyon—the largest governmental project undertaken for many a day. The Panama Canal, said the orators (and no doubt they spoke the truth), had not cost so much as it would cost to dam the Colorado River, to conserve its tremendous power, to control its flood waters and put the river to work tamely watering long rows of cotton, potatoes, great fields of grain. Long enough had it gone leaping down through the wildest, most gorgeous scenery in the country. Now it must be harnessed to new industries and become the servant of plowboys, the friend of prospectors. It must pull trains across the desert which it was to transf
