Moapa Town, NV

Moapa is an unincorporated Clark County town and census-designated place in the Moapa Valley, a long drive north of Las Vegas where desert mountains, the Muddy River, and wide-open valley roads set the scale. The first permanent settlement dates to 1865. Its industrial chapter came through Reid Gardner Generating Station, a major coal-fired plant that operated in the valley for decades, while Nevada's second- and third-tallest structures, the Moapa Entravision Tower and Moapa Kemp Tower, rise nearby.

Moapa has an unexpectedly cinematic history. Hal Roach filmed Black Cyclone here in 1925 and Flying Elephants with Laurel and Hardy in 1927, and a branch of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District serves as a civic room for a spread-out place. On maps, it may appear as Moapa Town; locally, Moapa is the name that sticks. The valley has always carried more than one kind of traffic. This is a high-desert settlement where coal, transmission towers, silent comedies, and the Muddy River share a horizon.