Ethel M Botanical Cactus Garden

This guide to the Ethel M Botanical Cactus Garden in Henderson follows candy heir Forrest Mars Senior, who stepped down from running Mars in 1973, moved to the Las Vegas area with his elderly mother Ethel, and got restless enough to build a liquor-filled chocolate factory named after her. It traces the three-acre garden he planted outside his own apartment above the factory floor, packed with more than three hundred cactus species hauled in from as far as Arizona. Forrest Mars discovered Nevada was one of only two states that allowed real liquor inside candy, and his mother's own unused recipes gave him the rest of the idea.