When Was Lake Las Vegas Created?

When was Lake Las Vegas created? I was told that a wash that drains into Lake Mead goes under the lake. How much earth is between the wash and the bottom of the lake? How long did it take to create the lake? Where do they get water to maintain the lake level?

[Editor's Note: This QoD is written by David McKee.]

Lake Las Vegas was first conceived in 1967 by Carlton Adair, who hoped to create “Lake Adair.” Twenty years later nothing had been done and Adair was bankrupt.

Enter entrepreneur Ronald Boeddeker, who acquired the necessary 2,000 acres from the Bureau of Land Management. That land subsequently went to Transcontinental Properties and, in 1990, the process of filling the massive earthen impoundment with treated wastewater (diverted from the Las Vegas Wash) began. It took three billion gallons to fill the “lake.” The surrounding master-planned community of the same name began taking shape in 1995 at a cost of $5 billion.

Meanwhile, two diversion pipes were installed to conduct water from the Wash to Lake Mead, bypassing Lake Las Vegas. According to consulting firm WJE, “The bypass system consists of two, side-by-side, 84-inch-diameter, concrete pipes designed to pass flows from Las Vegas Wash into the lake.”

The aforementioned pipes are owned by the City of Henderson, but their upkeep is the responsibility of Lake Las Vegas, which led to some embarrassment in 2009 when they fell into “substantial disrepair” and had to be refurbished to the tune of $3 million. Had the two-mile-long pipes deteriorated any further, Lake Las Vegas would have leaked into them and drained like a bathtub. “This wasn’t a sky-is-falling type of warning. There was a real concern that the pipes could fail,” Kirk Brynjulson, vice president of land development at Lake Las Vegas, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

If you want to see where the pipes begin and end, start by taking Lake Las Vegas Parkway to the Hilton hotel, which sits across from the point of influx. Then go around the lake to an earthen dam at the bottom of a cliff (surmounted by condominiums) where the water rejoins the natural wash.

The close call with the pipes aside, the lake has been the most successful feature of Lake Las Vegas, a real estate project with more financial holes than Swiss cheese and a complete failure as a casino market. But that’s a story for another day.

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Comments

kennethross Apr-25-2022

I’m looking forward to …

… the “story for another day.”
I’d be rather interested to read the LVA team’s take on Lake Las Vegas’ conception, development and overall execution, a sort of synopsis/analysis of what was done well and what was not. And perhaps a guess about its future. 
Would you good folks consider taking a stab at that some time?

Tabbycat Apr-25-2022

Seconded

. ..

Stewart Ethier Apr-25-2022

LLV real estate doing well

The negative comment about the Lake Las Vegas real estate market was certainly true 10 years ago, but today the market is booming.  For example, 51 single family home sales in first quarter 2022, average price $965 K.

Kevin Lewis Apr-25-2022

Didn't fulfill the intended purpose

It was never deep enough to properly dispose of a body.

Question of the Day - 25 April 2022

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