Fremont Street

Fremont Street is the original Las Vegas. The casinos here were running before the Strip existed, and unlike the Strip this is genuinely inside the city limits. Five blocks of it have been closed to traffic and roofed over since 1995, and nearly twenty million people a year walk through underneath.

Two things have changed since most accounts of it were written. The screen overhead was entirely replaced in 2019, so the figures usually quoted for it describe the previous one. And the neon cowgirl everybody photographs came down in 2016 and now hangs indoors.

What it is

Five blocks of Fremont Street, pedestrianised and covered by a canopy, lined with the casinos that were Las Vegas before anyone built on the Strip — the Golden Nugget, Binion's, the Four Queens, the El Cortez a little further east, and the Golden Gate, which opened in 1906 and is the oldest in the city. The covered section is officially the Fremont Street Experience.

The difference from the Strip is not subtle. This is five blocks rather than four miles, so it can actually be walked; the casinos are older, smaller and cheaper; table minimums are lower; and drinking in the street is permitted, which accounts for a good deal of the atmosphere. Whether that makes it better or worse is a matter of taste, and visitors tend to be firm in their opinions either way.

The canopy, and the figures that are out of date

The underside of the canopy is a screen called Viva Vision, ninety feet above the mall and running about a quarter of a mile.

It was completely replaced in 2019. The work ran from May to the end of December and produced a screen of 49 million LEDs and over sixteen million pixels — four times the resolution of the old one and seven times as bright, at 5,000 nits. Accounts that give 12.5 million LEDs are describing the previous screen, which is two generations back.

Shows run after dark, several minutes at a time, generally set to music, with free concerts on stages beneath. The specific titles rotate, so any account naming particular shows is describing a programme that has long since moved on.

Vegas Vic and Vegas Vickie

The two most photographed signs in Las Vegas are both here, and only one of them is still outside.

Vegas Vic, the waving neon cowboy, has stood above the former Pioneer Club since 1951 and remains on the street.

Vegas Vickie, the kicking cowgirl, was designed by Charles Barnard and first lit in 1980, above a club called the Girls of Glitter Gulch, specifically to give Vic a companion. The two were "married" in a mock ceremony in 1994. She came down in 2016, when Derek Stevens bought her; Yesco restored her in 2020; and she now hangs indoors at Circa, in the cocktail lounge named after her. Older accounts place her out on Fremont Street. She is not there, and photographing her now requires going into a casino.

Circa, which did not exist

The largest single change downtown in forty years. Circa opened its casino on 28 October 2020 and its hotel that December — the first hotel-casino built from the ground up in the Fremont Street area since 1980. Thirty-five floors and 480 feet, extended by four more floors in October 2024 to 618 rooms.

Two things make it unusual. It is adults only: nobody under twenty-one is admitted except to the steakhouse. And its roof carries Stadium Swim, a six-tiered deck of six pools facing a screen some 143 feet across, temperature-controlled and open the whole year — which in a city where outdoor pools are unusable for several months is a more serious idea than it first appears.

The rest of downtown

  • SlotZilla, a zip line launched from a tower built in the shape of an enormous slot machine, flying the length of the canopy on two levels — seated on the lower one, head-first on the upper.
  • The Downtown Container Park, a few blocks east, built from shipping containers, with a praying mantis at the entrance that shoots flame. It is the one part of downtown that works well with children during the day.
  • The Neon Museum, just north, where the signs went when the hotels carrying them were demolished. Its visitor centre is the salvaged lobby of the La Concha Motel, rescued and moved here. It is the best thing in downtown Las Vegas and the one most visitors never reach.

Getting there

Downtown sits roughly ten minutes' drive north of the top of the Strip, and the Deuce bus runs the whole way along Las Vegas Boulevard and on to the Fremont Street terminal. It is not a walk from the Strip, whatever the map suggests — the stretch of Boulevard in between is long, hot and dull.

The casinos themselves, and how a Las Vegas gaming floor is arranged, are covered under Las Vegas casinos. General practicalities for the city are on the Las Vegas page.

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