Boulder City

Boulder City is a town in the Mojave Wasteland. Boulder City was formerly a functioning town, but was destroyed by the NCR during the First Battle of Hoover Dam. Normally Boulder City acts as a mill town in which all the concrete mixing workers live at, but as of now, Boulder City is a practical ghost town with one permanent resident since Deathclaws stopped production of limestone from Quarry Junction.

Background
Boulder City began its life as a federal company town, established in 1931 by the Bureau of Reclamation and Six Companies, Inc. to house the workers contracted to build the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. The town replaced the collection of ramshackle tents and sheds established along the river since the beginning of the Dam's construction in 1930. As a publicly owned company town, Boulder was carefully planned and built up as a model community under Saco Rienk de Boer, a Dutch-born urbanist. Although his plan was ultimately rejected due to the projected costs, Boulder City was nevertheless heavily inspired by his work and designed to house around five thousand workers. Entrepreneurs had to be vetted by the Bureau of Reclamation in order to set up shop within the town and any visitors had to enter the town with a special permit. Since it was also founded during the Prohibition, alcohol was naturally banned within city limits. The city would not be incorporated until later in the century, and would remain relatively small and contained, like the nearby Henderson.

A peripheral town by the late 21st century, Boulder City survived the Great War almost unscathed and became a frontier, sleepy town functioning until 2277 and the First Battle of Hoover Dam. Vacated by its denizens, the town was packed with high explosives and used as a booby trap against the Legion's primary force. When Caesar's forces entered the town, lured in by Chief Hanlon's battle plan, the town exploded around them. For the price of a town, the NCR broke the back of the Legion's offensive and threw it back across the Colorado. A memorial to the NCR soldiers who fell during the battle was placed at the western end of town, near the main entrance.

Nearly the entire town was leveled in the battle, sparing only the concrete mixing yard near the Boulder City train station and the Big Horn Saloon. In the following years, the ruins became a stopover town for caravans resting at the Saloon and a source of concrete for the NCR's fortifications built up and down the Colorado, produced using limestone shipped in by train from Quarry Junction. However, because of the recent Deathclaw infestation at Quarry Junction, limestone mining has ground to a halt which has in turn put a hold on deliveries and production of concrete. All the concrete workers that usually inhabit the town have wandered off leaving only Ike, the bartender of the town saloon, as the only resident. The NCR has been using the concrete to construct bunkers up and down the river, but now that the trains have also stopped coming in and no concrete to be produced those plans have been put on hold.

Layout
The town is fairly small and mostly deserted. The concrete works and the Boulder City train station sit on the northern edge, together with a lone locomotive. The entrance road leads into the town and the Boulder City Memorial, sitting right next to the Big Horn Saloon. Private Kowalski can be found at the memorial, paying his respects to his fallen brother, PFC Donald Kowalski.

The main section of the town, the ruins, are accessible through the entrance at the northeastern end, and are a stretch of ruined buildings surrounded by an impassable belt of destroyed concrete and brick. The only other notable spot is in the house opposite the ruins entrance, which contains the remains of Ranger Teresa Lutz and two other troopers, killed in the explosion that broke the Legion offensive.

The location of Boulder City can be gleaned from Manny Vargas, the holodisk in his possession, or his terminal at Novac. The showdown in the ruins also marks the point where Act I starts to draw to a close, with the player finally learning the identity of the Courier's would-be killer.

Curiously, there are numerous ravens in the area.

Locations

 * Big Horn Saloon
 * Boulder City Memorial
 * Boulder City train station
 * Boulder City ruins
 * Great Khan hideout

Notable loot

 * Boulder City ruins


 * Big Horn Saloon


 * Boulder City train station

Related quests

 * They Went That-a-Way: The pursuit terminates at the ruins, with the Courier finally learning the identity of the man who shot them in the head...
 * Ring-a-Ding-Ding!: ...and where he is, for those inclined to vengeance.
 * Boulder City Showdown: The Great Khans are cornered by NCR troops in the ruins.
 * Defacing the Humble Stone: A small bit of interactivity, where the player can attack the stone and earn the ire of Private Kowalski.
 * We Must Stop Meeting Like This, III.

Behind the scenes

 * Boulder City is an actual town in Nevada located 20 miles south-east of Las Vegas. Lake Mead, located next to Boulder City, is the home of the Hoover Dam. Interestingly enough, Boulder City is one of two towns in Nevada where gambling is illegal; the other being the town of Panaca.
 * According to J.E. Sawyer, post-endgame play would see the memorial knocked down and replaced with a statue to Caesar in the event of a Legion victory.
 * Spare Us the Cutter
 * There is an unused Boulder City Worker here with an equally unused unique dialogue line. There are also lots of unused ai packages for the workers, including an odd one that makes one of them walk to a stool at the 188 diner. Possibly he was supposed to be there killing time until Boulder City opened for work again?
 * It seems there is a cut quest involving a character called "Jack Wilson". A cut note (JackWilsonNote) lays bare what would likely happen in this quest; Jack Wilson is a contractor in charge of the rebuilding of Boulder City. It seems that he also operates the quarry, and what can be inferred from the note is that he is essentially getting paid to move the stone from the quarry to the city ruins. However, the existing rubble could be used instead to save money. It seems the NCR have vetoed this as they consider the materials "unusable" (whether they are or not, or whether this is some kind of scam or simply NCR bureaucracy wasting money isn't clear). The quest concerns finding Wilson at Gomorrah, and then convincing him to do something - probably to use the rubble to speed up/save money on the rebuilding costs. It's unclear who would ask the player to do this, but the information is said to be told to the player by the big Horn bartender Ike.
 * The quest may have even been an alternative to clearing the quarry of deathclaws. The building work is held up by the workers at Sloan being unable to mine new stone due to the creatures, so perhaps this quest was to get them to use the existing rubble instead to get around this problem.
 * Victor has a cut line for when the player can meet up with him here in the early game (when he stalks the player before getting to the Strip). If the player asks him about having seen Benny he has a line with deliberately impossible conditions where he suggests he's never heard of Benny before and didn't know that was the name of the man the player is following. This seems to have been deliberately cut, it doesn't make sense for both lines to be in the game.

Appearances
Boulder City appears in Fallout: New Vegas.