Question of the Day - 25 September 2021

Yes, Lake Sahara is manmade. It was built starting in 1984 when Sahara Avenue wasn't even paved that far out and completed in 1986; Sahara had been paved to it by then. 

It covers 30 acres and is stocked with bluegill, channel catfish, largemouth bass (up to four pounds), sunfish, and even some endangered razorback sucker fish. It's also home to freshwater turtles, ducks, geese, herons, cormorants, grebes, and many other types of migratory water fowl, such as Canada geese. Falcons have been known to make brief appearances. 

You can boat in it, subject to a long list of restrictions, including no inflatable boats, rafts, inner tubes, personal floating devices, windsurfers, sailboards, motor surfers, and jet skis.

You're not allowed to swim in it. The Rules and Regulations forbid "swimming, wading, diving, floating," etc. 

The Lakes (named for the originally planned two lakes, though only one was completed) is an affluent two-square-mile master-planned and gated community comprising 300 homes and condos, from 1,500 to 12,000 square feet, and commercial areas consisting of offices and business headquarters.

The community occupies roughly a giant square of western Las Vegas, bounded on the west by Fort Apache Road and on the east by Durango Drive. Sahara Avenue and Desert Inn Road form the northern and southern boundaries, respectively. Lake Sahara runs north-south within these confines, with several branches of the lake digitating out into the community, so that nearly every house has "shorefront" property. The home styles range from modern to faux Tudor, not to mention an enormous Romanesque mansion.

In the earliest years of The Lakes, Citibank located its main Citicard payment processing center there (1985). The USPS designated two special zip codes to handle the vast volume of incoming and outgoing mail. But in order to avoid what in those days was the "negative connotation" of credit-card payments going to Las Vegas, the zip codes were assigned the name The Lakes, Nevada. (The facility closed in 2014.)