Downtown
Fremont Street and old downtown Las Vegas
Before the Strip there was Fremont Street. Downtown Las Vegas is the original 1905 railroad townsite, where the first hotels, the first paved street, and the first neon signs went up. Today the Fremont Street Experience canopy and the surviving vintage casinos make downtown the place to understand the older, tighter, more walkable Las Vegas.
The original town
Fremont Street runs through the heart of the 1905 railroad townsite and is named for the explorer John C. Frémont, who passed through the region in the 1840s. This was the first commercial spine of Las Vegas: it held the early hotels, the first paved street in the city, and, as gaming was legalized in Nevada in 1931, the casinos that made downtown famous.
The strip of casinos along Fremont became known as "Glitter Gulch" for its dense neon, and several of the oldest names in the city are here — the Golden Gate traces its site to the Hotel Nevada of 1906, and the Golden Nugget has anchored the block since 1946. Downtown is where the vintage identity of Las Vegas is most legible.
The Fremont Street Experience
By the late twentieth century the Strip had pulled attention and investment south, and downtown responded by covering several blocks of Fremont Street with a pedestrian canopy. The Fremont Street Experience, opened in 1995, closed the street to cars and turned it into a covered pedestrian mall with an overhead light-and-sound show, later joined by a zipline and free concerts.
The result is a compact, walkable, distinctly older Las Vegas: lower room rates than the Strip, tighter distances, and a concentration of vintage casinos, rather than the mega-resort scale of Las Vegas Boulevard. It is a different trip, not a smaller version of the same one.
Keeping the neon
The neon signs that defined Glitter Gulch and the early Strip are themselves part of the city's history, and many that were taken down as properties changed have been preserved. The Neon Museum, just northeast of Fremont Street, displays retired signs in its outdoor "Boneyard," giving downtown a direct link to the design language of mid-century Las Vegas.
Downtown also nurtures a separate cultural scene beyond the casinos, including the nearby Arts District along Main Street, which keeps the older parts of the city from being only a nostalgia stop.
Sources
Reviewed source trail
- Fremont Street Experience — about — checked 2026-07-12
- City of Las Vegas — history — checked 2026-07-12
- The Neon Museum Las Vegas — checked 2026-07-12