Overview

Because the demand for power was exceeding supplies available from Hoover Dam, Southern Nevada Power started construction of its own steam turbine generators in the 1950s, beginning with Clark Station.

History: Nevada Power

Helping Southern Nevada Prosper Since 1906
Nevada Power Company has been serving Las Vegas since 1906 when the city was little more than a village at the end of a railroad line. The company's first distribution system was powered by a small generator and the copper wires were supported by 6 by 8 inch redwood timbers from the town lumberyard.

As the local newspaper noted, although the community was only six months old, it had all the "modern, cosmopolitan" improvements. "Henceforth it is farewell to tallow dips and smoky oil lamps! Las Vegas is pursuing the destiny which nature intends for it."

Little did the editor know that Las Vegas would eventually become an international tourist destination with over 100,000 guestrooms and that Nevada Power would become the fastest growing electric utility in the U.S.

The original company, Consolidated Power and Telephone, kept adding small, gasoline-powered generators until 1914 when the company negotiated a contract to buy all of its electricity from the railroad power house. By 1929, the company had split into two separate corporations - Southern Nevada Power Company and Southern Nevada Telephone Company.

First Utility Served by Hoover Dam
In 1937, Southern Nevada Power became the first utility to distribute electricity from newly completed Hoover Dam, the major source of power for Las Vegas for the next 18 years.

Convinced the dam would become a major tourist attraction, the first of Las Vegas's hotel-casinos, the plush El Rancho Vegas, was opened in 1940. By the end of the 1940s, several more dotted the landscape. The community's economy also benefited from the steadily growing chemical industry near Henderson and from gypsum and limestone mining.

Because the demand for power was exceeding supplies available from Hoover Dam, Southern Nevada Power started construction of its own steam turbine generators in the 1950s, beginning with Clark Station. Now the company operates four power plants and has a financial interest in three others.

The company dropped "Southern" from its name in 1961, following its acquisition of the Elko-Lamoille Power Company in northern Nevada. During the same year, Nevada Power was the first Nevada-based company to have its common stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange.