Just off Las Vegas' bustling Flamingo Road, surrounded by family homes, apartment complexes, and stores, an unassuming two-story house sits on top of what may be the city's most peculiar home.
Some 25 feet beneath a typical Las Vegas-style yard of gravel and palms, an elaborate underground compound waits to shield its residents in luxury from the ravages of nuclear war. With three bedrooms, four baths, and a fireplace, a 5,000-square-foot home looks out at fake trees, fake flowers, an artificial lawn, plastic boulders, and murals of rural scenes.
The sprawling 15,000-foot artificial environment features a ceiling-sky with lighting to simulate night and day, a swimming pool, putting green, and two jacuzzis. If that isn't enough, there's also a sauna, bar, dance floor, and barbecue grill. Since this is a fallout shelter, it also includes a generator, fire and smoke alarms, an intercom system, and large food storage pantries.
Up at ground level, the clues that something is different about the unassuming two-story house are the turbine vents in the yard and the odd sloped structure that houses the stairwell down to the underground lair. Google Maps satellite view shows several vents in the ground and a strange message to passing planes.
The unique home was built in the 1970s by Girard Henderson, a former Avon executive. Henderson lived underground full-time and founded Underground World Home Inc., which promoted subterranean health and safety benefits as well as "the ultimate in true privacy."
After Henderson's death in 1983, the underground property changed hands several times, and was saved from foreclosure with a purchase in 2015.