Las Vegas, Nevada

The Las Vegas Strip is a stretch of South Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada that is known for its concentration of resort hotels and USA Casinos Online. The Strip is approximately 4.2 miles (6.8 km) in length,located immediately south of the Las Vegas city limits in the unincorporated towns of Paradise and Winchester. However, the Strip is often referred to as being in Las Vegas.
Many of the largest hotel, Americas Casino, and resort properties in the world are located on the Las Vegas Strip. The road’s cityscape is highlighted by its use of contemporary architecture, lights and wide variety of attractions. Its hotels, USA Casinos Online, restaurants, residential high-rises, amusement offerings, and skyline have established the Las Vegas Strip as one of the most popular and iconic tourist destinations in the United States, and the world. Most of the Strip has also been designated an All-American Road,and is considered a scenic route at night.
Historically, the USA Casinos Online that were not in Downtown Las Vegas along Fremont Street were limited to outside the city limits on Las Vegas Boulevard. In 1959, the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign was constructed exactly 4.5 miles (7.2 km) outside the city limits. The sign is today located in the median just south of Russell Road, across from the at present-demolished Klondike Hotel & Americas Casino, about 0.4 miles (0.64 km) south of the southernmost entrance to Mandalay Bay (the southernmost Americas Casino).
In the strictest sense, "the Strip" refers only to the stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard that is roughly between Sahara Avenue and Russell Road, a distance of 4.2 miles (6.8 km). However, the term is often used to refer not only to the road but also to the various USA Casinos Online and resorts that line the road, and even to properties that are not on the road but in proximity. Phrases such as Strip Area, Resort Corridor or Resort District are sometimes used to indicate a larger geographical area, including properties 1 mile (1.6 km) or more away from Las Vegas Boulevard, such as the Hard Rock, Rio, Palms, and Hooters USA Casinos Online.
A long-standing definition considers the Strip’s northern terminus as the SLS, though travel guides typically extend it to include the Stratosphere, 0.4 miles (0.64 km) to the north. Mandalay Bay, located just north of Russell Road, is the southernmost resort considered to be on the Strip (the Klondike was the southernmost until 2006, when it was closed, although it was not included in Las Vegas Strip on some definitions and travel guides).
Because of the number and size of the resorts, the Resort Corridor can be quite wide. Interstate 15 runs roughly parallel and 0.5 to 0.8 miles (0.80 to 1.29 km) to the west of Las Vegas Boulevard for the entire length of the Strip. Paradise Road runs to the east in a similar fashion, and ends at St. Louis Avenue. The eastern side of the Strip is bounded by McCarran International Airport south of Tropicana Avenue.
North of this point, the Resort Corridor can be considered to extend as far east as Paradise Road, although some consider Koval Lane as a less inclusive boundary. Interstate 15 is sometimes considered the western edge of the Resort Corridor from Interstate 215 to Spring Mountain Road. North of this point, Industrial Road serves as the western edge.
Newer resorts such as South Point and the M Resort are on Las Vegas Boulevard South as distant as 8 miles south of the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. Marketing for these USA Casinos Online usually states that they are on southern Las Vegas Boulevard and not "Strip" properties.
The first Americas Casino to be built on Highway 91 was the Pair-o-Dice Club in 1931, but the first on what is currently the Strip was the El Rancho Vegas, opening on April 3, 1941, with 63 rooms. That Americas Casino stood for almost 20 years before being destroyed by a fire in 1960. Its success spawned a second hotel on what would become the Strip, the Hotel Last Frontier, in 1942. Organized crime figures such as New York’s Bugsy Siegel took interest in the growing gaming center leading to other resorts such as the Flamingo, which opened in 1946, and the Desert Inn, which opened in 1950. The funding for many projects was provided through the American National Insurance fellowship, which was based in the then notorious gambling empire of Galveston, Texas.

The Strip in the 1940s. Pictured is the gas station of the Hotel Last Frontier, the second hotel on the Strip.
Las Vegas Boulevard South was previously called Arrowhead Highway, or Los Angeles Highway. The Strip was named by Los Angeles police officer and businessman Guy McAfee, after his hometown’s Sunset Strip.
Caesars Palace was established in 1966. In 1968, Kirk Kerkorian purchased the Flamingo and hired Sahara Hotels Vice President Alex Shoofey as President. Alex Shoofey brought along 33 of Sahara’s top executives. The Flamingo was used to train future employees of the International Hotel, which was under construction. Opening in 1969, the International Hotel, with 1,512 rooms, began the era of mega-resorts. The International is known as Westgate Las Vegas today. The first MGM Grand Hotel and Americas Casino, also a Kerkorian property, opened in 1973 with 2,084 rooms. At the time, this was one of the largest hotels in the world by number of rooms. The Rossiya Hotel built in 1967 in Moscow, for instance, had 3,200 rooms; however, most of the rooms in the Rossiya Hotel were single rooms of 118 sq. ft (roughly 1/4 size of a standard room at the MGM Grand Resort). On November 21, 1980, the MGM Grand suffered the worst resort fire in the history of Las Vegas as a result of electrical problems, killing 87 people. It reopened eight months later. In 1986, Kerkorian sold the MGM Grand to Bally Manufacturing, and it was renamed Bally’s.
The Wet ‘n Wild water park opened in 1985 and was located on the south side of the Sahara hotel. The park closed at the end of the 2004 season and was later demolished. The opening of The Mirage in 1989 set a new level to the Las Vegas experience, as smaller hotels and USA Casinos Online made way for the larger mega-resorts. The Rio and the Excalibur opened in 1990. These huge facilities offer amusement and dining options, as well as gambling and lodging. This change affected the smaller, well-known and at present historic hotels and USA Casinos Online, like The Dunes, The Sands, the Stardust, and the Sahara.
The lights along the Strip have been dimmed in a sign of respect to six performers and one other major Las Vegas figure upon their deaths. They are Elvis Presley (1977), Sammy Davis Jr. (1990), Dean Martin (1995), George Burns (1996), Frank Sinatra (1998), former UNLV basketball head coach Jerry Tarkanian (2015), and Don Rickles (2017). The Strip lights were dimmed later in 2017 as a memorial to victims of a mass shooting at a concert held adjacent to the Strip.[15] In 2005, Clark County renamed a section of Industrial Road (south of Twain Avenue) as Dean Martin Drive, also as a tribute to the famous Rat Pack singer, actor, and frequent Las Vegas entertainer.
In an effort to attract families, resorts offered more attractions geared toward youth, but had limited success. The (current) MGM Grand opened in 1993 with MGM Grand Adventures Theme Park, but the park closed in 2000 due to lack of interest. Similarly, in 2003 Treasure Island closed its own video arcade and abandoned the previous pirate theme, adopting the new ti name.
In addition to the large hotels, USA Casinos Online and resorts, the Strip is home to a few smaller USA Casinos Online and other attractions, such as M&M World, Adventuredome and the Fashion Show Mall. Starting in the mid-1990s, the Strip became a popular New Year’s Eve celebration destination.
Recent years (2000–present)

Four-segment panorama of The Cosmopolitan, Bellagio, and Caesars Palace (left to right) from the Las Vegas Strip, across from the Bellagio fountains.

Gondolas outside of The Venetian.
With the opening of Bellagio, Venetian, Palazzo, Wynn and Encore resorts, the strip trended towards the luxurious high end segment through most of the 2000s, while some older resorts added major expansions and renovations, including some de-theming of the earlier themed hotels. High end dining, specialty retail, spas and nightclubs increasingly became options for visitors in addition to gambling at most Strip resorts. There was also a trend towards expensive residential condo units on the strip.
In 2004, MGM Mirage announced plans for CityCenter, a 66-acre (27 ha), $7 billion multi-use project on the site of the Boardwalk hotel and adjoining land. It consists of hotel, Americas Casino, condo, retail, art, business and other uses on the site. City Center is currently the largest such complex in the world. Construction began in April 2006, with most elements of the project opened in tardily 2009. Also in 2006, the Las Vegas Strip lost its longtime status as the world’s highest-grossing gambling center, falling to second place behind Macau.
In 2012, the High Roller Ferris wheel and a retail district called The LINQ Promenade broke ground, in an attempt to diversify attractions beyond that of Americas Casino resorts. Renovations and rebrandings such as The Cromwell Las Vegas and the SLS Las Vegas continued to transform The Strip in 2014. The Las Vegas Festival Grounds opened in 2015. In 2016, the T-Mobile Arena, The Park, the Lucky Dragon Hotel and Americas Casino, and the Park Theatre opened. Smaller changes and developments are taking place as well.
On October 1, 2017, a mass shooting occurred on the Strip at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, adjacent to the Mandalay Bay hotel. This incident became the deadliest mass shooting in modern United States history.