Henderson
Typical home prices$$–$$$$$$350k to $1.5M and up
9 main communities, 3 for ages 55+
Ask Mike about HendersonMain communities
Sun City MacDonald Ranch 55+
Del Webb, 55+, built 1996-2001
Del Webb built Sun City MacDonald Ranch, its second 55-and-over community in the Las Vegas Valley after Sun City Summerlin, between about 1996 and 2001. It has roughly 2,500 homes, a mix of single-family houses and attached villas, on about 560 acres inside the larger MacDonald Ranch plan in the Henderson foothills. The Desert Willow Golf Course, an 18-hole executive course that is also open to the public, and the community clubhouse are on West Horizon Ridge Parkway.
History of Henderson
Henderson began as a war plant town. In 1941 Basic Magnesium Inc. started building a magnesium plant on open desert southeast of Las Vegas, where it could draw power from Hoover Dam and water from Lake Mead. The metal went into aircraft and incendiary bombs, and at its peak the operation employed about 14,000 people. Their housing, the Basic Townsite, was later named for Charles B. Henderson, a former Nevada senator who chaired the federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which financed the plant.
Production stopped in November 1944, and the government offered the plant for sale as war surplus. The Nevada Legislature authorized the Colorado River Commission to buy it, which kept the town alive. Henderson incorporated on April 16, 1953, with about 7,400 residents.
Later growth came from planned communities. In the 1970s the MacDonald family put together about 3,200 acres that became MacDonald Ranch, including Sunridge and MacDonald Highlands. Cadence sits on 2,200 acres east of downtown that held evaporation ponds for the plants from the 1940s. After a long cleanup by LandWell, its first models opened in December 2014.