If you want to look at old stuff you don’t go to Las Vegas. The city’s barely a century old, kicking up in 1905, but didn’t start to resemble the Vegas everybody thinks of until the 1950s. And then it became an almost entirely different city in the ‘90s and ‘00s. The last few decades have seen a number of legendary resorts close down, their gleaming facades and sparkling neon signs going dark and disappearing from the Strip as developers replaced them with bigger, newer, and more modern hotels.
We might not be able to visit these buildings today, take in a show or gamble at their casinos, but at least we can still admire their striking, brilliantly designed neon signs. The Neon Museum is a non-profit open-air museum just off the Strip that’s devoted to preserving and displaying the unique signage that is as much a part of the Vegas myth as showgirls and jackpots. It preserves both Vegas history and the artistry of these iconic signs, and needs to be a stop on your next Vegas trip.
It’s a relatively small collection on display. It might take an hour to tour it all, and you should definitely try to do one of the official guided tours so you can learn the history of the most notable signs. As you’d probably expect, it’s best at night, when signs are illuminated, although I’ve visited in the daytime as well and it’s still impressive and fascinating.
Las Vegas is making more of a concerted effort to preserve and present its history. Some of the oldest casinos in town, like the Golden Gate and the El Cortez on Fremont Street, have undergone recent renovations that modernize their amenities while maintaining their pre-war charm. The Mob Museum, which opened in 2012, presents the history of organized crime both in and outside Las Vegas in a more serious fashion than you might expect.
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and anything else that gets in his way. He’s also on Twitter