This History of Las Vegas covers both the Las Vegas, Nevada and the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Las Vegas was given its name by the members French of the Antonio Armijo party in 1829 who used the water in the area while heading north and west along the Old Spanish Trail from New Mexico. In the 1800s, small parts of the Las Vegas Valley contained artesian wells that supported extensive green areas, hence the name Las Vegas, Spanish for The Meadows. The flows from these wells fed the Las Vegas Wash which ran to the Colorado River.