Las Vegas, Nevada: The Meadows, and Who Named Them

Everyone agrees the name of Las Vegas, Nevada, is Spanish for the meadows around its springs. Who first called it that is another matter. The oldest written use we found shows the name was already there when John C. Frémont rode in on May 3, 1844.

What Frémont found

Frémont, a brevet captain in the Army’s Topographical Engineers, was traveling northeast on the Spanish trail when he stopped for the night. His report, printed by the Senate in 1845, says the party “encamped in the midst of another very large basin, at a camping ground called las Vegas — a term which the Spaniards use to signify fertile or marshy plains, in contradistinction to llanos, which they apply to dry and sterile plains.”

Notice the word “called.” Frémont didn’t name the place. He wrote down a name that travelers on the trail were already using. If you’ve ever wondered why a desert city is named for meadows, his next lines are the answer: “Two narrow streams of clear water, four or five feet deep, gush suddenly, with a quick current, from two singularly large springs.” The water was 71 and 73 degrees, and he called it “a delightful bathing place.”

Meadows or marshy plains

You’ll usually see Las Vegas translated as “the meadows.” That’s how the 1913 History of Nevada puts it, and it’s the reading in the federal place-names record. Frémont’s “fertile or marshy plains” is a little different, and Henry Gannett, listing Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1905, offered both: “the plains,” or “the meadows.” Either way, the point is wet, green ground in a dry country.

The word wasn’t unique to this valley, either. Farther along the trail on the same trip, Frémont reached “las Vegas de Santa Clara,” a big mountain meadow where, he wrote, “the annual caravan from California to New Mexico halted and recruited for some weeks.”

Who said it first

This is where the sources split.

• Antonio Armijo, 1829. The U.S. Geological Survey’s place-names record says Armijo came upon the springs and meadows in 1829 and “named the place ‘Las Vegas’ which means ‘the meadows.’” The record cites a 2006 book, not a diary entry from the trip.
• Rafael Rivera. The popular story gives the credit to Rivera. Nevada’s state historical marker for him, as quoted in search results, says he scouted for Armijo’s sixty-man trading party from Abiquiu, New Mexico, and calls him the first European American of record to view and cross the valley. That’s a claim about who got there first, not about who chose the name.
• Franciscan missionaries. In the 1913 History of Nevada, C. P. Squires wrote that Franciscan fathers, “more than a century ago,” gave the name “Las Vegas.” Another chapter of the same history says the name “doubtless” came from some such expedition, and adds that “some contend” a Spanish explorer it calls Escalante used it first. Neither chapter points to a document.

The Armijo version has the federal record behind it, and it fits with Frémont finding the name in use on the trail 15 years later. Still, nobody we read quotes anyone actually naming the place, so the best-supported answer points to the New Mexico traders who used that trail, and even then we can’t say which one of them.

The town came much later

For decades Las Vegas was a stop, not a town. Squires says that in May 1905 the railroad, having bought 1,800 acres of the old Stewart ranch along with the springs, sold off lots at auction. The sale started on May 15 under a mesquite tree near the freight depot, and 1,200 lots went for $265,000 in all. The federal record has the city incorporated in 1911.

So by the time anyone could buy a lot in Las Vegas, the name had been on the trail for at least 61 years. The meadows came first. The city just borrowed their name.

Sources & further reading

• John C. Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843–’44 (1845), pp. 266, 270. The May 3, 1844, camp at a place “called las Vegas,” his definition of the term, and the springs (p. 266); las Vegas de Santa Clara (p. 270).
• GNIS feature 847388 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record’s account of Armijo naming the place in 1829, citing Home Ground (2006); incorporation in 1911.
• Sam P. Davis (ed.), The History of Nevada, vol. 1 (1913), p. 215. The name “doubtless” from an early Spanish expedition, and the claim that “some contend” for Escalante.
• C. P. Squires, “Clark County,” in Davis (ed.), The History of Nevada, vol. 2 (1913), pp. 795–797. The Franciscan version, the 1905 railroad purchase and auction, and the 1,200 lots sold for $265,000.
• Nevada State Historic Preservation Office, historical marker No. 214, “Rafael Rivera.” Rivera as a scout for Armijo’s party and the first European American of record in the valley. Read through search-result excerpts only.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905). Las Vegas, New Mexico, as “the plains,” or “the meadows.”