Fremont Street: The Original Las Vegas

Before the Strip existed, Las Vegas was Fremont Street. The Northern Club picked up one of Nevada's first six gambling licenses here in nineteen thirty-one, and within a decade the block was blazing with neon powered by Hoover Dam's electricity, earning the nickname Glitter Gulch. Binion's, the Golden Nugget, and the Pioneer Club lined up shoulder to shoulder, each marquee trying to outshine the next.

By the nineteen nineties, competition from the megaresorts had hollowed out the old downtown. A seventy million dollar project, backed by casino owners and the city, opened in nineteen ninety-five as the Fremont Street Experience, a pedestrian mall capped by a four-block LED canopy. The original Las Vegas reinvented itself as a nostalgia destination, trading its sawdust-floor grit for a light show overhead.