Last updated: August 2026
Las Vegas sits in a broad desert valley in southern Nevada, ringed by mountain ranges that turn a stark, pink-orange color at sunset. It's best known for the Strip, a four-mile stretch of resort casinos each built as a themed spectacle, but the metro area is also a genuine city of over two million people with a downtown arts district, a growing food scene, and quick access to some of the most striking desert landscapes in the American Southwest.
Visitors who come purely for casinos and nightlife will find plenty on the Strip and in the older Fremont Street corridor downtown, but the city also rewards those interested in Mid-Century architecture, geology, and outdoor recreation: Red Rock Canyon and Lake Mead are both under an hour from the Strip, and the Hoover Dam is a straightforward day trip.
Because the city runs almost entirely on tourism and convention business, it has an unusually large concentration of high-end restaurants, spectacle shows, and shopping for its size, while the residential neighborhoods beyond the tourist corridor remain fairly ordinary suburban Nevada.
Quick facts
- Population
- About 660,000 in the city, over 2.3 million in the metro area
- County
- Clark County
- State
- Nevada
- Country
- United States
- Setting
- Desert valley ringed by mountain ranges
- Nearby cities
- Henderson, Boulder City
- Best known for
- The Strip's casino resorts, entertainment and shows, nearby desert scenery
Things to Do
Bellagio Fountains
Free choreographed fountain shows set to music run every 15 to 30 minutes on the Strip in front of the Bellagio's lake.
View in NearbylyFremont Street Experience
Downtown's pedestrian mall under a canopy of LED screens, older and grittier than the Strip, with cheaper casinos and live music.
View in NearbylyThe Neon Museum
A boneyard of retired casino signage from across the city's history, including pieces from the La Concha and the Stardust.
View in NearbylyThe Sphere
A newer immersive concert and entertainment venue whose exterior LED shell has become a Strip landmark in its own right.
View in NearbylyCirque du Soleil shows
Several long-running Cirque productions are staged in Strip resorts, including the aquatic 'O' at Bellagio and 'Mystere' at Treasure Island.
View in NearbylyMob Museum
Housed in the city's former federal courthouse, this museum traces organized crime's role in Las Vegas's development.
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Eat Local
Lotus of Siam
A strip-mall Thai restaurant, originally from northern Thailand's Isaan region, that has drawn national acclaim for decades.
View in NearbylyChinatown Plaza (Spring Mountain Road)
A dense corridor of Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, and Filipino restaurants well removed from the Strip's tourist prices.
View in NearbylyPeppermill Restaurant
A retro coffee shop open since 1972 with a fireside lounge, a Vegas time-capsule experience more than a food destination.
View in NearbylyEsther's Kitchen
An Italian restaurant in the Downtown Arts District known for house-made pasta and a lively neighborhood feel away from the casinos.
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Shopping & Markets
The Arts District (18b)
Downtown's gallery and antique district, with First Friday art walks and a growing cluster of independent shops.
View in NearbylyContainer Park
A downtown retail complex built from repurposed shipping containers, home to small local boutiques and a playground with a fire-breathing praying mantis sculpture.
View in NearbylyThe Forum Shops at Caesars Palace
An elaborately themed indoor mall styled after ancient Rome, one of the highest-grossing shopping centers in the country.
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Hidden Gems
Seven Magic Mountains
A large-scale public art installation of stacked, painted boulders in the desert just south of the city, easy to combine with a drive toward Jean or the Nevada-California border.
View in NearbylyPinball Hall of Fame
A nonprofit arcade packing hundreds of playable vintage pinball machines, with proceeds going to charity.
View in NearbylySprings Preserve
A museum and botanical garden built around the original springs that gave the valley its name and its water source.
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Nature & Outdoors
Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area
A 13-mile scenic loop drive and hiking trails through red sandstone formations just 20 minutes from the Strip.
View in NearbylyValley of Fire State Park
Nevada's oldest state park, about an hour northeast of the city, with vivid red rock formations and ancient petroglyphs.
View in NearbylyLake Mead National Recreation Area
The reservoir behind Hoover Dam offers boating, swimming, and hiking, with the dam itself an easy add-on stop.
View in NearbylyMount Charleston
A cool, forested mountain area about an hour from the Strip, popular for hiking in summer and skiing in winter, a striking contrast to the desert valley below.
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A little history
Las Vegas — Spanish for 'the meadows' — was named for natural springs that made the valley a stopover on the Old Spanish Trail. It was founded as a railroad town in 1905 when the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad auctioned off lots, and it incorporated as a city in 1911.
The construction of the Hoover Dam in the early 1930s brought a wave of workers and helped establish Nevada's legal gambling industry, legalized by the state in 1931 during the same period. The Strip's casino-resort era began in earnest after World War II, with the El Rancho Vegas and later the Flamingo, financed in part by organized-crime figures including Bugsy Siegel, setting a template that corporate owners would later formalize.
Howard Hughes's buyout of several casinos in the late 1960s helped shift ownership from mob-linked operators to corporations, and the following decades saw the Strip's shift toward mega-resorts, family entertainment in the 1990s, and later the luxury and entertainment-district model that defines it today, including the addition of major sports franchises like the NHL's Golden Knights and NFL's Raiders.
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