Las Vegas » The Strip may provide modern-day glitz but Fremont Street is where Vegas became Vegas.
Las Vegas' old downtown is home to the El Cortez, Binion's Gambling Hall, Fitzgerald's, The Golden Nugget, the Four Queens, the Plaza and Main Street Station. They offer a feel of Las Vegas' early days, coupled with an atmosphere that seems more welcoming to average folks than high rollers.
El Cortez, perhaps the oldest property in Vegas, opened in 1941 and was owned by well-known personality Benjamin Bugsy Siegel. Jackie Gaughan bought the place in 1963, wandering the casino and greeting players. While it offers the latest in gambling technology, El Cortez retains much of its 1940s charm.
Fremont Street, lovingly known as Glitter Gulch, is where Texas gambler Benny Binion opened the Horseshoe Club in 1951 with a simple slogan: Good Food. Good Whiskey. Good Gamble. Guy McAfee, an ex-vice detective from Los Angeles, opened The Golden Nugget there in 1946 for $1 million and proclaimed it "the largest casino in the world." The Irish-themed Fitzgerald's opened on St. Patrick's Day in 1988.
Historians love to take walking tours of "The Neon Museum," a Las Vegas non-profit dedicated to preserving and restoring some of the gambling town's classic signs, 10 of which can be viewed on or near Fremont Street in their restored splendor.
Fremont Street is a wonderful place to sit and watch people from all over the world. Here, tourists purchase cheap T-shirts, tacky souvenirs or visit with vendors selling a variety of strange stuff. There's even a strip club, the Girls of Glitter Gulch, with a big video screen on the outside promoting its "wares."
Older Utahns who grew up visiting Las Vegas might remember driving down the middle of Fremont Street, whose flashing lights seemed to provide daylight all night long. That changed a bit in 1995 when The Fremont Street Experience opened.
This new and usually free Las Vegas attraction is a 90-foot tall, 4-block long dome (now covering a pedestrian mall) that offers multi-sensory light shows that originally used 540,000 watts of sounds and 2.1 million lights. The experience became even more glitzy in 2004 with a $17 million makeover that included 12 million high-resolution LED lights.
These days, the light show often features country and rock acts with tributes to Queen, KISS and American Pie currently playing along with the 10 p.m. Halloween-themed Monster Mash. The four-block screen is used for special events, such as New Year's Eve.
And there are seasonal surprises.
For example, the "OktoberFrightFest" is populated by scary street performers, including one who gets "electrocuted" by an electric chair, free stage shows by German illusionist Jan Roeven, and The Haunted Casino at Binion's. Through Halloween, the Casino features three "haunts" including the 3-D Toxic Martini, Casino RoyHell and Hotel Diablo.
And Fremont Street keeps reinventing itself, too. The Golden Nugget is scheduled to open its new $180 million, 500-room hotel tower in December.
For more information on Fremont Street, visit www.vegasexperience.com.
