When you look for homes for sale in Henderson today it is difficult to imagine that in the 1940s this was an industrial, polluted town. However, it has thrown off its grimy past and grown to a population of nearly a quarter of a million, some of whom live in Nevada’s most attractive neighborhoods: Lake Las Vegas, Seven Hills, MacDonald Ranch, Anthem, and Green Valley. Residents do not need to travel to the strip for casinos as there is the Green Valley Ranch Station and Sunset Station. When it comes to shopping the Galleria at Sunset is on a par with any major mall in the country.

Henderson started out a lot smaller that it is today, and it has grown from 13 square miles to 105 square miles. This growth has not been at the expense of the environment, and there are extensive green parks throughout the area. It all started back in 1910 when James Miller became the first person to live in the area when he homesteaded Jericho Ranch. By the 1920s the ranch was subdivided into Jericho Heights, and it later grew to become a community known as Midway City.  A temporary boost in Henderson’s development came with the 1931 building of the Hoover Dam. Constructions workers who could not afford Boulder City settled in Midway, however, as soon as the dam was completed in 1936 they left a ghost town behind them.

Midway City is what we know today as the Pittman area, and it was the first area to be settled. The second area, known as the Basic Townsite, was on a much larger scale. Magnesium was a very important metal in the manufacture of military equipment and in 1941 Basic Magnesium Incorporated (BMI) opened a factory at Basic Townsite. The construction of homes soon followed in the area that has since become downtown Henderson (the temporary housing that was built to house the workers in the early BMI days went to be used as low income housing into the 1970s). Charles B. Henderson, an Elko senator, was instrumental in providing a loan to BMI, and the town took his name.

With the end of the war, the demand for magnesium dropped out, and Henderson’s population shrank in the same way that it had after the completion of the Hoover Dam. The BMI plant shut, and, along with Basic Townsite, was eventually purchased by the state in 1948. With half of Henderson’s homes empty and a closed factory on the state’s books, something had to be done. Another war was around the corner, and with the start of the Korean War magnesium came back into demand. This meant the reopening on the old BMI factory, and in 1952 it was sold by the state along with the Townsite. With an instant increase in the number of private houses, Henderson incorporated as a city in 1953.

Henderson’s expansion came via acquisitions of land from the Bureau of Land Management, and most of the homes for sale in Henderson today are on what was previously BLM land. As the city acquired land from BLM it would sell it onto developers, and as the BMI plant grew so did the surrounding area. From 1960 to 1970 the population doubled to just under 24,000 and throughout the 1970s the city continued its expansion. This growth was led by industrial facilities such as the Levis Strauss warehouse that opened in 1978. As a result the city was functional rather than pretty, and it suffered from the effects of pollution. All this changed in the 1980s, when Henderson underwent an amazing transformation.

One of Las Vegas’s most prominent figures, Hank Greenspun, started the master-planned community of Green Valley, and this set the standard for all future developments thereafter. Greenspun assembled 3,500 acres over a 20 year period and then increased that holding when the city of Henderson sold him 4,720 acres. At the same time the 3,500 acres now officially became part of Henderson. The development did not get off to a flying start though as the first Green Valley developer built twenty houses, and then promptly went bust. Things picked up when Pardee Homes came in, and built 500 homes on 100 acres it acquired in 1977. Pardee was followed by the Collins Brothers, US Home, and Metropolitan Homes. The most significant development was the Green Valley Athletic Club in 1988, which added some much needed facilities. High end developments such as the Fountains and Ridges followed and Green Valley started to shape up as a rich master-planned community. Many people looking for homes for sale in Henderson restrict themselves to Green Valley, but other developments such as Seven Hills and Anthem, took the lessons of Green Valley and provide their own unique twist on living in Henderson.