Congratulations to everyone at Players Publishing. Being a regular contributor to the various magazines has been one of my great pleasures over the past 15 years – I have enjoyed both reading others’ views and relished the forum to research and opine on topics of personal interest, finding a community of like-minded professionals.As we are celebrating landmarks this summer (and a notable birthday for me), I was asked to highlight the 10 key events in the Las Vegas journey. I settled, appropriately, on 21!

A lecture I often deliver to various groups is titled, “How We Got Here” – it’s a punchy and sometimes colorful exposition on how Las Vegas evolved from a minor settlement to a major global destination. In past columns, I have explored some of these in detail, so here I have just skipped to the fundamental points in certain cases. However, as the narrative builds in layers, it must be observed that few events exist in isolation without reference to the environment in which they occurred.