Desert Solitaire? Not so Much.

From above, Las Vegas looks just plain wrong, like it was airlifted into the Mojave Desert. Its sprawling developments, with aquamarine pools and lush green golf courses, are incongruous with the stark natural landscape. But Sin City, never been known for restraint, was expanding at a breakneck pace, buoyed by projects such as the $1 billion Black Mountain suburban development—until the housing bubble burst in 2008. Construction stalled, leaving behind a desert mutilated by empty concrete pads and roads to nowhere. Photographer Michael Light captures the destruction from the air in his new book, Lake Las Vegas/Black Mountain, the third of three tomes on the inhabited West.

The economy has picked up again and so has development. It’s a risky wager, especially considering the years-long drought plaguing the West. Lake Mead, which supplies Las Vegas and Los Angeles with water, is at historic lows. While Vegas has slashed water use by a third in the last decade, 70 percent of the water the city diverts from Lake Mead still goes to landscaping. But look on the bright side (it is the desert, after all), as nature writer Rebecca Solnit does in an essay in Light’s book. “Though all this fleeting hubris and bustle has reshaped and scarred the land,” she writes, “what will endure is geology and the primordial forces of weather, water, and wind. The earth endures.” Those desert developments, on the other hand? Wouldn’t bet on it.

Photo: Michael LightPads for unbuilt homes in a development on Black Mountain, Henderson, Nevada, 2012. Developers spent $250 million in mountaintop removal and terracing.

Photo: Michael LightLake Las Vegas Homes, a bankrupt development in the distance, Henderson, Nevada, 2010.

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