Boulder City —
canyon waterfalls and the historic muni.

Boulder City is a thirty-minute drive southeast of the Strip on US-93, on the way to Hoover Dam. The town was built in the 1930s to house dam workers and it's still one of two Nevada cities that prohibits casino gambling — a quieter setting that the golf reflects. Cascata is the headline: Rees Jones, opened 2000, carved into the Eldorado Valley canyons with a waterfall running through the clubhouse atrium and a back nine that descends through the canyon walls. It's a Caesars Entertainment property, so the path in usually runs through a host or a Caesars stay. Boulder Creek Golf Club is the public counterweight — a 27-hole municipal designed by Mark Rathert, three nine-hole loops (Desert Hawk, Coyote Run, Eldorado Valley) playable in any combination. And Boulder City Golf Course itself is the historic muni that's been around since 1972, the kind of pace-of-play round you book at sunrise. Three courses, three price points, one short corridor.