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The minute the visitor steps off the plane at McCarran Airport, directly into a sea of slot machines, Las Vegas makes its raison d’etre apparent. But the gambling town that sprouted from the desert in 1931, when casinos were first legalized, has grown up. Once a wrong-side-of-the-tracks den gamblers’ den run by the mob, Vegas is now a glitzy, over-the-top high-stakes fantasy land that is not just for gamblers anymore.
Yes, most visitors still come to gamble, but today they come with wives, even  children, to discover a different side of one of America’s fastest-growing cities: breathtaking desert landscapes and an Old
West heritage, world-class art and what may well be America’s largest concentration of celebrity chefs.
Bedazzled by the Las Vegas Strip — where else would you find the Eiffel Tower within spitting distance of the Statue of Liberty, an ancient Egyptian pyramid and a Roman coliseum, all ablaze with neon? It’s easy to forget that Las Vegas is in the desert, and not just any desert. This is the fabled Wild West.
Just half an hour from the Strip, craggy red mountains rise above a desert landscape; an occasional cactus rises above the scrub like a modernist sculpture. On the road to Spring Mountain Ranch, jack rabbits with cotton-ball tails lope past; wild burros wander by. The former cattle estate of a wealthy rancher, Spring  Mountain’s Old West flavor is overlaid with a gloss of celebrity that seems perfectly in keeping with modern
Las Vegas. The history of the ranch goes back more than a century, to the days when explorers and mountain men wandered the land. A sandstone cabin and blacksmith’s shop, dating from 1864, still stand — the oldest buildings in Las Vegas.
The ranch has had a series of celebrity owners over the years, from radio star Chester Lauck (old-timers will remember that he was “Lum” of “Lum and Aboner”), to the wealthy German Alfred Krupp and his wife Vera. Vera’s footnote to celebrity istory is that she was the owner of a 33.6- carat diamond ring, which was stolen from her at gunpoint in her own living room on the ranch. The ring was recovered, and after her death, purchased by Richard Burton for his then-wife, Elizabeth Taylor. In the 1960s, millionaire Howard Hughes
bought the ranch; today it is owned by the Nevada State Parks Department.
Just a few minutes from Spring Mountain, Bonnie Springs Old Nevada was also the site of a ranch back in 1843, a stopover on the wagon routes to California. Today, it offers a taste of the Old West that is ideal for families with children. This pint-sized town looks as if it had been lifted straight from a cowboy movie: wooden buildings, given that authentic look by the harsh desert climate, line the town’s one street.
There is the barbershop (“teeth pulled,” offers a hand painted sign), the sheriff ’s office, the Saloon and the General Storecum- museum. A dimly lit, slightly creepy wax museum has a random sampling of Old West figures — a prospector, a missionary, a mountain man and a Native American — and a “talking” Abraham
Lincoln.
Like a movie set, though, there is little behind the facades, but there is still plenty of charm for an afternoons’ worth of entertainment. The town’s “sheriffs” put on several shoot-em-up shows a day (including a hanging) that involve delighted participation from the kids, and a “melodrama” in the town Saloon (yes, parents can get a beer). An open-sided train takes short trips through the desert landscape, and kids (and adults) can get up close and personal with a host of animals — deer, goats, prairie dogs, wolves — at the petting zoo on the property. For a real immersion in Las Vegas nature, there is nothing like spending
some time at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. This was once home to the Paiute Indians, whose naif art — pictographs and petroglyphs — are today standard accents in modern Las Vegas art.
At Willow Spring, within the canyon, visitors can see some of the originals on an especially well preserved rock. Hiking and biking trails through the 80,000-hectare spread allow visitors to explore the landscape of hills, their rich, rust red contrasting with the forest green of the trees and shrubs.
For more on the strange, almost otherworldly plants of the Mojave Desert, visit the Red Rock Canyon visitor center, where many of these plants are on display, along with explanations of how they have adapted to the harsh desert climate.
Here, too, a surprising number of animals are likely to wander past: burros, bighorn sheep, antelope, wild horses, erhaps even coyotes.
When the desert gets to be too much, switch gears and head for dessert — at Las Vegas’ own chocolatier. Just east of Spring Mountain stands the unassuming onestorey modern factory building that is the home of Ethel M chocolates. This line of gourmet chocolates was the retirement project of Forrest Mars, the co-founder of the company that makes M&M’s candies.After a lifetime of creating chocolates for the mass market, Mars went upscale with these handmade delicacies, named for his mother.
Enveloped in the scent of fresh chocolate,visitors can watch the making of some of the 60 different varieties the factory turns out, a ton and a half per shift. Industrial beaters swirl raspberry centers; workers take chocolate-covered candy apples off the line; caramels get a chocolate shower (and there are plenty of free samples along the way).
The chocolates are delicious, and it is orthwhile getting a box (most fun: creating a personalized selection from the varieties for sale) — Mars picked Las Vegas for Ethel M’s because the state of Nevada was one of the few that would permit the sale of liqueur-filled chocolates, and as a result, the chocolates are only
available in Las Vegas and in one store each in Reno, Honolulu and Virginia. Just outside the factory is Ethel M’s cactus garden, which is almost as famous as the chocolates. A cactus wonderland with over 350 cacti, succulents and desert plants, many rare and exotic, the garden is one of America’s largest cactus  collections.
In a town associated with over-the-top and tacky, the world-class art here comes as something of a surprise. It was Steve Wynn, the casino tycoon behind the Bellagio casino, who first brought serious art to Las Vegas in 2000. The Wynn Collection includes paintings by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Henri Matisse,while the impressive Guggenheim Hermitage Museum features a similar lineup, along with works by Pierre Auguste  Renoir, Camille Pisarro, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Marc Chagall and Pierre Bonnard in a collection that critics have called stunning.
These days, Las Vegas’ reputation as an art mecca is even attracting touring exhibits. “Claude Monet:  Masterworks from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” features 21 Monet paintings (including his famous water lilies) at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art until January, 2005.
Less highbrow, but no less impressive, is “The Art of the Motorcycle” at the Guggenheim Las Vegas. Essentially a history of the motorbike, the exhibition includes motorbike marvels like an 1868 Michaux Perraut, which was driven by steam, and the Triumph Speed Twin that Marlon Brando rode in “The Wild One.”
The US$5.99 buffets that once defined Las Vegas dining are still advertised all around town, but they have stiff competition these days. A recent Las Vegas ad boasted that “any chef worth his or her sea salt is clamoring to make an impression here.” True enough: One would be hard pressed to find a more impressive concentration of talent in any city. Wolfgang Puck, whose cooking at the L.A. celebrity hangout Spago is legend, started the trend, and today he has stellar company in a pantheon that includes the equally legendary Thomas Keller of the French Laundry, Jean- Georges Vongerichten, Nobu and Mario Batali, with Alain Ducasse the most recent addition.
The happy result: Haute cuisine is idely available, and the city has become a dining destination. It’s just one more reason in an ever-growing list to visit Las Vegas — even if you can’t tell a craps table from a roulette wheel.
For more information on Las Vegas, visit www.lasvegas24hours.com