Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign

The sign says Las Vegas — but you're standing in Paradise, and the only thing this town never changes is its habit of changing.

Key facts

The “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign was designed in 1959 by Betty Willis (with Western Neon), who never copyrighted it — she called it a gift to the city — so it appears on merchandise everywhere; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 and converted to solar power in 2014.
The sign, and most of the Las Vegas Strip, stands in the unincorporated town of Paradise, Nevada — not the City of Las Vegas — which casino interests incorporated in 1950 largely to avoid city taxation and annexation; the city limit runs along Sahara Avenue.
Harry Reid International Airport (renamed from McCarran in December 2021) sits just east of the sign and has slot machines throughout its terminals — about 1,300 of them — greeting arrivals from the gate.
The Las Vegas Strip is roughly a 4-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard that has repeatedly demolished and rebuilt its resorts — the “reinvention is the only constant” thesis of this tour.

Narration transcript

Look straight ahead: seven letters of pure Americana, glowing inside a silver diamond over the median — WELCOME TO FABULOUS LAS VEGAS. Before we roll, one thing about how this tour works. The narration plays itself, hands-free; the screen is for your passenger, or for the parking lot. It is never for the driver. Keep your eyes on the road and let the voice do all the work.

Now, the sign. Betty Willis designed it in 1959, and here's the lovely part — she never copyrighted it. She called it her gift to the city, which is exactly why it's on every T-shirt, shot glass and fridge magnet in Nevada. It's on the National Register of Historic Places, and since 2014 it runs on solar power.

Here's the first trick the desert plays on you: the sign says Las Vegas, but you are not in Las Vegas. You're standing in a town called Paradise — an unincorporated town the casino owners conjured into being in 1950 to dodge city taxes. Most of the Strip isn't in the city at all.

And behind you is the airport, where the slot machines start at the gate — about thirteen hundred of them, waiting before you even reach baggage claim. They renamed it Harry Reid International in 2021; the regulars still call it McCarran.

So here's the thesis for the next two hours, the thing most people miss about this place. The only thing Las Vegas has never changed is its habit of changing. This street has blown itself up and rebuilt roughly every twenty years, and half of what I'll point out is the site of something that's already gone.

We drive it as one straight line, south to north. To start, leave the lot onto the southbound lanes, make the U-turn at Sunset Road just ahead, and come back north on Las Vegas Boulevard — we'll follow it the whole length of the Strip. First up, on your left, those bronze-and-gold towers catching the sun: Mandalay Bay.