The Neon Museum

Once in a while, when I'm staying in downtown Las Vegas, I'll take a long wander east on Fremont Street, from Las Vegas Boulevard to wherever. Many years back, this area used to be filled with bars, pawn shops and tawdry souvenir shops.

The City of Las Vegas and the merchants have cleaned it up quite a bit.

Designed by Raymond Larsen, the Aladdin Hotel lamp was built by Young
Electric Sign Co. in 1966. It became a part of the Neon Museum in 1997.

One of the first things they did once they closed off Fremont Street and installed that blocks-long Fremont Experience light show overhead was establish the Neon Museum, an outdoor display of neon signs that once identified Las Vegas's hotspots.

A few years later, the Fremont East District was established, continuing eastward along Fremont Street, which now sports a median strip and more neon signs. The East District extends the Neon Museum a few more blocks. 


"Oscar's Martini" and "Viva Las Vegas" signs
installed in 2007

The neon signs in the East District are more contemporary, many of them created especially for display and dedicated to famous Las Vegans.

More of the older, classic neon signs are installed on Third Street, at the west end of the Fremont Experience (next to the Fremont Hotel & Casino).

Downtown Las Vegas has changed tremendously since the first time I stayed at the Fremont Hotel when I was in college. I remember taking $20 in cash for gambling, and playing the nickel slot machines. We tossed around 25-cent chips on the craps table, asked the pit bosses for ash trays that we used in our apartments back in Los Angeles, and ate at the 99-cent breakfast coffee shops.

The neon signs bring back the memories; they are nostalgia at its finest.