Civilization returned to the Wasteland in uncounted different ways. The new world
was built over the ruins of the old -- twisted parodies and strange evolutions of human society,
propped up on any wreck that might offer refuge or stability.
Shady Sands was different.
Its foundation was not some ancient bastion or crumbling landmark, but an idea. It was built
from the ground up, brick by brick. First a meager settlement, next a thriving capital,
and finally a reminder, one as brutal as the Wasteland itself, that war, war never changes.
No record exists amongst the chroniclers of the Wasteland as to when the area that
would become known as “Shady Sands” was first repopulated. It was believed to have been settled
as early as 2098 by former Vault residents in possession of a Garden of Eden Creation Kit,
a powerful self-contained terraforming device. Access to pre-war technology such
as this helped to jumpstart the settlement, and together with sandcrete buildings and
rudimentary farms a barren plot of land was turned into one of the most promising
communities in the Wastes. The town’s own history lists its official founding as 2142.
By 2161, Shady Sands had become a known quantity across New California. Though
still mostly isolated, tales of a thriving settlement with entirely new construction,
irrigated farms and herds of brahmin, had spread, mostly by traders operating out of
the nearby Junktown. Its growing reputation however attracted raiders while its crops,
cattle and sometimes even its citizens, were preyed upon by the mutated creatures
native to the area. Only the intervention of a wanderer, sometimes known as the “Vault Dweller”,
is said to have prevented Shady Sands from being overrun in this early, tumultuous era.
Over the decades that followed, Shady Sands continued to grow, becoming an economic power
in the heart of New California. A trade pact with Junktown evolved into a loose alliance,
until in 2186, Aradesh -- community leader of Shady Sands, proposed a formal republic uniting
the major settlements of the region. The New California Republic was established in 2189,
with Shady Sands as its first Capital, and Aradesh its first president.
As the heart of what was quickly becoming the most powerful bloc in New California,
Shady Sands prospered and expanded, reaching a population of over 3000
citizens in 2241. The original settlement had been almost entirely replaced by this time,
with new buildings echoing the sophistication of pre-war architecture befitting the town’s
status as a national capital. Home to both the Hall of Congress and the Presidential Mansion,
Shady Sands became synonymous with the New California Republic.
With an agricultural sector bordering on pre-war levels of productivity and
increasingly electrified by power coming out of the Hoover Dam,
Shady Sands was almost certainly one of the largest and most successful settlements
across the entire American Wasteland. In its last census, it claimed a total population
of almost 35,000 residents. But the wealth and the power it commanded made it a target.
Survivors claim that the fall of Shady Sands began in 2277,
though what form this took remains disputed. It was likely precipitated by the NCR’s ongoing war
against Caesar's Legion for control over New Vegas, and the near-constant skirmishes with
the Brotherhood of Steel. However it began, it ended some years later in a mushroom cloud,
and Shady Sands today is only a collection of memories, and vast rad-soaked craters.
News flows freely across the wasteland, carried along by caravans and travelers.
But it is twisted and mutated along the way as easily as everything else. Some believe
that the destruction of Shady Sands means the end of the NCR, and nothing remains beyond the
scattered remnants of its military clinging to the ruins of the Los Angeles boneyard. Others
have faith that the Republic endures, and that a new government has been established elsewhere,
ready to reclaim their first capital and the rest of the Wasteland beyond.
Whatever the truth, the destruction of Shady Sands is a reminder that the world can be saved,
but so long as visions differ on what salvation looks like, war is inevitable. And if war doesn’t
change, men must change -- and so must their symbols. Shady Sands was a beacon of hope,
resilience, and progress, now it is a place of despair, failure and loss. But if the motives
behind its destruction were ever brought to light, and those responsible were ever held to account,
then Shady Sands might become the most potent kind of symbol to exist in the
Wasteland -- a rallying cry. Because before it was a capital, before it was a settlement,
Shady Sands was an idea: as defiant and enduring as the sequoias that rise still in Sierra Nevadas,
and as unrelenting as the waves of the Pacific, pushing ever eastward.