Las Vegas Layover at the Welcome Sign
Part of the full Las Vegas Layover: Walking the Strip From LAS
The Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign has stood in the middle of the boulevard since 1959, four miles south of the Las Vegas city limits, with a black glass pyramid full of ticketed exhibitions and a hall of 150-odd playable pinball machines within a mile of it.
The 1959 Welcome sign in the boulevard median
Betty Willis drew it, Western Neon built it, and Clark County paid $4,000 for it in 1959, which bought twenty-five feet of internally lit steel in a stretched diamond on two poles. Willis never registered a copyright on the design, and said afterwards that if she had, it would not have ended up on as much as it did; the shape is now on more T-shirts, tattoos and packaging than any accounting could follow.
The reverse, which nobody photographs, reads “Drive Carefully” and “Come Back Soon”, because it was made to be read from a car by people leaving. The National Register of Historic Places added it on 1 May 2009, and Nevada’s own register in December 2013.
Titanic and Bodies inside the Luxor pyramid
The Luxor opened at 3900 South Las Vegas Boulevard on 15 October 1993, thirty storeys and 357 feet of black glass in the shape of a pyramid with a sphinx out front, and its two long-running exhibitions have been there long enough to count as fixtures rather than tours.
One is built around objects raised from the Titanic’s debris field, including a piece of the hull, laid out through recreated corridors and cabins; entry can be booked in advance. The other is an anatomy exhibition of preserved human bodies and organs, dissected and set out system by system, and it sells its own ticket. An hour each is about right, and the atrium they open off is free to walk through if neither appeals.
After dark the pyramid does the thing it is actually known for. Thirty-nine xenon lamps of 7,000 watts apiece sit in the top of the building and fire a single column straight up out of the apex, focused by curved mirrors, first switched on the night before the resort opened. Aircraft pick it up from as far out as 275 miles. Standing directly under it costs nothing, and on a clear night the insects it pulls in give you a sense of the scale.
150 playable machines at the Pinball Hall of Fame
At 4925 Las Vegas Boulevard South, two minutes’ walk from the sign, a plain warehouse with PINBALL across the front in red capitals holds what it says is the largest collection of pinball machines anywhere, running from wood-rail tables of the 1950s to current production.
Everything on the floor works and everything is meant to be played. Walking in is free, games are 50 cents to a dollar, and change machines save you turning up with a bag of quarters. The part that does not come up on the way in: it is a non-profit, run by volunteers, and what it takes above costs goes to the Salvation Army. Doors are 10am to 9pm Monday to Thursday and to 10pm on Friday and Saturday, so it covers most of the hours a late departure leaves free.
Standing here means standing outside, on a median or a parking lot, with no building of any kind within a couple of hundred yards and nothing overhead but the boulevard’s own lighting.
Harry Reid airport is about ten minutes by road from the sign
The runways at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) start close enough that departing aircraft pass low over this end of the boulevard all day, and by road the terminal is about ten minutes away, which makes a taxi or a rideshare the obvious answer from here. On the bus it takes a change: the double-decker runs south down the boulevard to the South Strip Transit Terminal, and the Red Line, which took over the Maryland Parkway corridor from Route 109 on 23 August 2026, runs from there to Level Zero at Terminal 1 every 12 minutes during the day. From Terminal 3 you finish on the airport’s own free inter-terminal shuttle.
Going the other way, everything the main Las Vegas guide covers is north of here, and the boulevard between the sign and Mandalay Bay is a genuinely unpleasant walk with no shade, so plan on the bus or a car rather than the mile and a half on foot. What this end has instead is proximity: with two hours rather than five, this is the only stretch of the Strip you can do properly and still make the gate without hurrying.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign actually in Las Vegas?
No, and it never has been. The sign stands at 5100 Las Vegas Boulevard South in Paradise, an unincorporated town in Clark County, about four miles south of where the Las Vegas city limits actually begin. Clark County commissioned it in 1959 and paid for it, which is why the county rather than the city has looked after it ever since. Most of what people mean by the Strip is in the same position: the resorts from Mandalay Bay up to the Sahara are in Paradise and Winchester, not in the city of Las Vegas.
Where do you park at the Welcome sign?
There is a free lot on the southbound side of the boulevard, built for exactly this. Clark County added twelve spaces and a paved walkway in December 2008 at a cost of $400,000, then put in twenty-one more in April 2015 along with marked crosswalks and traffic signals, because until then people were crossing four lanes on foot to reach a sign in the middle of them. Expect a line at the sign itself on any afternoon; it moves, because everybody in it wants the same twenty-second photograph.
What can you do at the south end of the Strip without spending anything?
More than the rest of the boulevard allows. The sign is free and lit around the clock, the parking beside it is free, and the Pinball Hall of Fame charges nothing to walk in, so you can look at 150-odd machines and only pay if you want to play one, at 50 cents to a dollar a game. The Luxor's beam is free to stand under after dark, and walking through the pyramid's atrium costs nothing either. The ticketed exhibitions inside it are the only part of this itinerary that needs a budget at all.
How do you get from the Welcome sign to the airport?
By road it is about ten minutes, which is why a taxi or rideshare is what most people use from here. On the bus it takes a change: the double-decker down the boulevard runs south to the South Strip Transit Terminal, and the Red Line runs from there to Level Zero at Terminal 1 of Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), reaching it every 12 minutes during the day. There is no walking route worth attempting, despite the runway lights being visible from the sign: the airport's perimeter road adds most of a mile to what looks like a short hop on a map.