Mid-range · 6-hour walk · Las Vegas
The Arts District and Fremont Street in six hours
Downtown, the neon boneyard, the old casinos and the district that came after them.
The three-hour route walks the Strip, which is what Las Vegas sells. This goes downtown to what the city was before it — Fremont Street, where the casinos started in the 1930s — plus the Neon Museum, a two-acre lot of dead signs that is the only place the city keeps its own history. Book the Neon Museum for dusk; the restored signs are relit and it is a different place after dark.
The route, stop by stop
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Neon Museum
Two hundred and fifty retired signs in an outdoor boneyard, with the 1961 La Concha motel lobby as the visitor centre. Guided or self-guided; the night tour is the one.
65 min here Walk here → -
Fremont Street Experience
Five blocks under a canopy screen, with the original casinos underneath — the Golden Gate opened in 1906 and is still there. Loud, free and unsubtle.
45 min here Walk here → -
Container Park
Shops and bars built from shipping containers around a playground, with a forty-foot praying mantis out front that shoots fire. Family-friendly until nine.
30 min here Walk here → -
18b Arts District
Antique shops, breweries and galleries in the old warehouse blocks. First Friday fills the whole district; other days it is very quiet.
50 min here Walk here → -
The Mob Museum
In the 1933 federal courthouse where one of the Kefauver hearings actually sat. Straight about how organised crime built the city, which the city spent decades not being.
60 min here Walk here → -
Smith Center
Art deco done properly and seriously, opened in 2012, with a carillon in the tower. The park in front is the best-kept lawn downtown.
25 min here Walk here →
More in Las Vegas
Every walking route in Las Vegas, or the full Las Vegas guide for where to stay and what a day costs.