The Lakes in Las Vegas: How a Bold 1980s Development Changed the West Side Forever

Seven miles west of the Strip, a crew of workers dug a pit roughly a quarter-mile wide and a half-mile long into pure desert scrub. No houses nearby. No roads to speak of. Just sagebrush, a sloping caliche grade, and one narrow lane heading toward Red Rock Canyon. They filled that pit with fresh water, ringed it with land parcels, and started selling lots. That was the beginning of The Lakes in Las Vegas — and it was one of the boldest real estate bets this valley had ever seen.

Most people who live near Sahara and Durango today have no idea they are driving over what was essentially open desert forty-some years ago. The Lakes changed that, and it changed far more than one zip code. The Lakes in Las Vegas set a template that developers would copy twice over before the valley finished growing.

How the Neighborhood Was Built From Scratch

Before The Lakes, western Las Vegas simply did not exist in any meaningful residential sense. The single road connecting the Strip corridor to Red Rock Canyon was a thin, single-lane stretch. Planners widened and extended it, and it became Sahara Boulevard — now one of the busiest arterials in the city.

Once the lake was dug and filled, several home builders purchased parcels around the shoreline and began construction. That first inner ring of homes went up relatively fast. Then something interesting happened. The development kept growing outward. More single-family homes were added. Condominiums followed. A shopping center came in. Parks were built and connected to the trail system around the water.

The planners who shaped The Lakes had a specific goal in mind: make this place look and feel unlike anything else in Las Vegas. They brought in waterfowl. They planted hundreds of pine trees. As those trees matured over the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the neighborhood started to look genuinely lush — a visual contrast to the surrounding desert that made people stop and stare. Additional smaller lakes were carved out to extend the water frontage and give more homes a view. The whole effect was deliberate and carefully staged.

The Development That Launched Two More

The Lakes in Las Vegas was not just a successful project on its own terms. It proved a concept that the market had never tested here: people in the desert will pay a premium to live near water, even manufactured water in a landlocked valley.

That proof of concept mattered. About five miles north of The Lakes, a similar project broke ground not long after. That development grew into Desert Shores, which eventually surpassed its predecessor in scale. Desert Shores features a lake roughly twice the size of The Lakes' main body of water, with several thousand homes and condominiums built around it, plus parks and commercial space along the shoreline.

Then came Lake Las Vegas, built on the east side of the valley adjacent to Lake Mead. A larger and more resort-oriented project, Lake Las Vegas extended the same basic idea — water as the anchor amenity — into a luxury resort and residential context. The lineage runs directly back to that original pit dug in the western desert.

All three communities exist today as distinct, mature neighborhoods. But The Lakes came first, and without its success, the others might never have been built.

Why It Still Matters Today

If you drive through The Lakes right now, you see mature trees, calm water, ducks moving along the shoreline, and a neighborhood that feels genuinely settled. That settledness took decades to build — the pine trees alone needed twenty or thirty years to reach their current height.

For anyone looking at homes in the 89117 or 89128 zip codes, that history is actually relevant. The Lakes is not a neighborhood that is still figuring out what it wants to be. The infrastructure is in place. The landscaping is mature. The community has a clear identity that predates most of the western valley's development.

The story of The Lakes in Las Vegas also tells you something about how this city grows. Las Vegas does not always follow conventional development logic. Somebody looked at raw desert seven miles from anything and decided to build a lake neighborhood. It worked. That willingness to do something that looks impractical on paper is part of why the valley looks the way it does today.

For a deeper look at homes and communities across the west side, visit our communities page.