The first inhabitants were the
Paiute Indians, who were spread across the
Las Vegas Valley. In 1905, the railroad town of
Arden was formed for miners who worked at the nearby gypsum mines just west of the area. The area was part of
Lincoln County until 1909, when
Clark County was split off from Lincoln County. The oldest structure in the area is a water tower, which was built in 1926. References to the area as "Enterprise" date back to at least 1918, when county commissioners established an Enterprise school district. According to one historian, the word may simply have been chosen at that time as a positive-sounding name. On April 21, 1958,
United Airlines Flight 736 and an Air Force jet collided into each other, causing 49 fatalities. The airliner crash site in 1958 was empty desert scrubland, but today commercial development near the intersection of
South Decatur Boulevard and West Cactus Avenue, adjacent to the community of
Southern Highlands, has encroached on the site. In 1999 a small metal cross was put up by the son of a victim as a memorial to the lives lost. Enterprise was formed as an unincorporated town on December 17, 1996, in response to a petition from residents who hoped it would help preserve the community's semi-rural identity. This was made to prevent annexation by nearby
Henderson. Immediately afterwards,
Clark County commissioners voted to annex about five square miles of land into neighboring
Spring Valley that included the master-planned community of
Rhodes Ranch and a regional park. The annexation plan was developed by commissioner
Erin Kenny. The vote was almost unanimous, with the sole exception of
Bruce L. Woodbury voting against annexation. The chairwoman of the county commission, Yvonne Atkinson Gates, was against the annexation, but voted for annexation anyway because she wanted to recall the situation after the next advisory board meeting in January 1997. Residents, both governmental and non-governmental, opposed the annexation because they had no say in the vote. The city wanted to annex land so it could have an exit on
Interstate 15 (specifically the
Sloan exit ), and so they could maintain Lake Mead Drive (now
St. Rose Parkway). Residents of Enterprise did not approve of the annexation plan because they wanted to preserve their rural lifestyle. County commissioners told some residents that the county could not stop Henderson from annexing a piece of their town, and said that the interlocal agreement was the best they could do. This agreement stopped Henderson from annexing section 33 (which was a heavily populated section of Enterprise), and instead annex sections 26 and 34, which were, at the time, undeveloped. Not long after the founding of Enterprise, population and development have seen a rapid growth, similar to many other communities in unincorporated Clark County. From 2000 to 2010, the population boosted from 14,108 residents to 108,481 in 2010; the number would more than double to 221,831 in 2020. ==Geography==