And I'm not trying to do anything exhaustive here. Just trying to, hopefully, help explain why garden variety logic never quite works when the subject is "Vegas", or oft times even "Nevada", etc.
L.V. exists at all only because of an anomaly in the old time federal mining laws. For many years, to take "Public Lands" private required only making a "mining claim", and then doing the minor red tape to take the claim "to patent".
Where the problem came from is whether the definition of "minerals" included common, ordinary, every day gravel. Because much, or most, or maybe even all of the Las Vegas metro sits on top of gravel. Gravel/land, land/gravel until not really all that long ago (approximately the fifties) used to belong to "We The People" (aka "Public Lands").
But, anyway, the "loophole" was capitalized on, and the mob, and no one knows who all else piled on to get rich off of we taxpayers. Vegas cost literally nothing originally, which is how, I'm sure, that place was leveraged into today's version of crazy .
Ask anyone to pay a fortune for a gravel pit, and there will be no takers.
Ask anyone to pay a fortune for some piece of "The Strip", and those with the right connections will even up the ante.
So Cliven Bundy, et al.?
Inevitable?