The Neon Museum and Neon Boneyard

For decades, when a Las Vegas casino replaced its sign, the old one was hauled off to the sign company's yard. The Neon Museum grew out of that habit. In the late 1980s and early 1990s a group of local arts advocates began collecting signs, and in 1996 the City of Las Vegas put up money to turn the effort into a museum. Its first public act, in November 1996, was to relight the Hacienda's Horse and Rider at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Fremont Street.

The collection needed somewhere to live. The city gave the museum a lot on North Las Vegas Boulevard in 2000, and from 2001 the Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO), which had built and stored many of the city's signs, began moving pieces there. That lot became the Neon Boneyard. For years it could be seen only by appointment.

In 2006 the museum acquired the lobby of the La Concha Motel, a swooping concrete shell from 1961, and moved it up the Boulevard from the Strip. Restored as a visitor center, it marked the museum's opening to the general public on October 27, 2012.

The Boneyard today holds more than 250 unrestored signs, lit from the ground at night, plus 32 restored signs that are kept lit. You will find letters, arrows, stars and whole characters from casinos and motels, among them the Stardust, the Riviera, Fitzgeralds and the El Cortez, alongside newer arrivals such as signage from the Mirage, which closed in 2024. A smaller North Gallery next door hosts Brilliant!, a projection show that brings dark, unrestored signs back to animated life.

The museum's reach also extends beyond its fence. Since 2009, when Las Vegas Boulevard was named a National Scenic Byway, it has restored signs for outdoor display along the road, a group it calls the Las Vegas Signs Project. Alongside the Hacienda horse and the Silver Slipper, the list includes small-business signs such as Society Cleaners, from 1946, and the Normandie Motel's hatchet-shaped sign, which the museum attributes to Betty Willis, designer of the 'Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas' sign. They are lit at night and free to see from the sidewalk.

Visits are by timed ticket, and guided tours are the classic way to see it. Tickets, tour types and hours are all on the official site, neonmuseum.org; check there before you go, since tours can sell out. The museum has been planning a move to a larger downtown site since 2024, so details may change.