Bullhead City, AZ
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About Bullhead City
BULLHEAD CITY - TODAY
To honor the past while moving into the future, the City of Bullhead City is a family-oriented, vibrant community for its residents and businesses seeking careful growth, environmental awareness, an affordable place to live and a high quality of life. In addition to these qualities of life, there are approximately two-million visitors per year that frequent Bullhead and its sister city the popular gaming community of Laughlin, Nevada.
Today, tourism continues to be a primary economic activity derived from the Laughlin resort/gaming industry, area water sports, golf, fishing, senior and youth sporting events and the thousands of winter visitors that come to this area for the desert weather and to enjoy more than 300 sunny days a year.
Bullhead City has also been referred to as Arizona‘s West Coast because the City is located on the east bank of the Colorado River near the juncture of Arizona, California and Nevada. Bullhead City serves as the economic hub and retail shopping center for Western Mohave County and Southeastern Clark County, Nevada. It's easily accessible by major highways and a short drive from Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
HISTORY OF BULLHEAD CITY
The modern beginnings of the city were revived with the construction of Davis Dam, which broke ground in 1942, but had to be halted because World War II consumed necessary construction materials. Construction resumed in 1946, a year after the war ended, and the dam was completed in 1950, which impounds Lake Mohave in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. The dam is named after the late Arthur Powell Davis, Director of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation from 1914 until 1923.
Construction workers on the project lived with their families at the foot of the dam in a community called Davis Camp. Nearby, a town sprang up from the remains of Hardyville to support the growing population. The town was named Bullhead City after a rock island in the Colorado River that resembled the head and shoulders of a bull with large, curved horns. The Bullhead City post office was established in 1946, and the rock was submerged under the rising water of Lake Mohave as it backed up behind Davis Dam in the early 1950s.
In the 1960s developers began advertising local subdivisions in Southern California, and the retirement population began to grow. The City’s population has grown from just over 10,000 residents in 1980 to more than 40,000, according to the 2010 Census.
The City of Bullhead City incorporated on August 28, 1984 and became Arizona’s 77th municipality. As of 2014, Bullhead City is approximately 57.2 square miles.