The Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, features signs from old casinos and other businesses displayed outdoors on 2.27 acres (0.92 ha). Efforts to establish a neon sign museum were underway in the late 1980s, but stalled due to a lack of resources. On September 18, 1996, the Las Vegas City Council voted to fund such a project, to be known as The Neon Museum. The organization started out by re-installing old signage in downtown Las Vegas, to attract more visitors to the area. Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) had manufactured many neon signs in the city, and the company had a storage site for old signs, which would eventually become part of the Neon Museum collection. In 2000, as YESCO prepared to close its storage lot, the city provided the museum with land to start its own. Tours of the new site, known as the Neon Boneyard, began in 2001, by appointment only. The lobby of the former La Concha Motel, located on the Las Vegas Strip, was donated to the museum and moved there in 2006, eventually becoming its visitor center. Construction to convert the lobby began in May 2011, and the museum officially opened to the general public on October 27, 2012, eliminating the appointment system. The Neon Museum's collection includes more than 200 signs. An expansion of the museum site began in 2017, although hundreds of neon artifacts still remained in off-site storage due to space limitations. In 2024, the museum announced plans to relocate to a larger site, with several under consideration as of 2025.
History
Background
Neon signage in Las Vegas dates to the 1920s, and saw a significant increase in popularity, especially among hotel-casinos, during the 1930s. Many signs were manufactured by Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO). In the 1970s, some locals advocated for the preservation of the city's neon signage. The Sands Hotel and Casino, located on the Las Vegas Strip, demolished its original neon sign in 1981, as part of a renovation. Calls for neon preservation became more prominent after the sign's removal. The locally based Allied Arts Council had been contacted by a Sands employee about saving the sign, but it lacked the necessary equipment and storage space to do so. In 1989, Allied Arts and its director, Patrick Gaffey, were working to establish a museum known then as the Neon Park, with 5th Street Liquor Store donating the first neon sign to the project. The sign, added in the late 1940s, had become well known among locals; it depicts a hand pouring a bottle of alcohol into a glass. Allied Arts set a site for the museum along North Las Vegas Boulevard, near Cashman Field. By 1991, the group had begun storing old signs for the future museum. Some were stored in the Nevada desert, and others were kept at YESCO's Las Vegas facility. In 1994, as Allied Arts struggled to obtain financing, the Southern Nevada Cultural Arts Foundation announced its own neon museum proposal. It would be built at the intersection of Sunset Road and Eastern Avenue, with an opening expected in mid-1995. However, this project also stalled. In 1995, Gaffey said about the Allied Arts project, "Our problem was we never had the manpower to devote to really getting it off the ground." Las Vegas mayor Jan Jones was supportive of a neon museum. In 1995, she recruited city employee Barbara Molasky to help make it a reality. According to Molasky in 2001, "The idea for a neon museum has been around for 20 or 30 years, and just for all kinds of logistics was never able to come together."
Formation and early years On September 18, 1996, the Las Vegas City Council approved the use of $150,000 in redevelopment funds toward the establishment of the Neon Museum. Despite the name, the project lacked a physical facility, which was deemed too costly at the time. Instead, the Neon Museum would focus initially on the re-installation of old neon signs along North Las Vegas Boulevard, helping to attract more visitors to downtown Las Vegas and the new Fremont Street Experience.
The Hacienda resort on the Las Vegas Strip had previously featured a popular neon sign depicting a cowboy on a horse, commonly known as the Horse & Rider sign. It sat in storage for years, and was refurbished by the Neon Museum at a cost of $60,000. It was re-installed and lit up on November 13, 1996, in a new location at the intersection of North Las Vegas Boulevard and Fremont Street. It marked the first project for the Neon Museum, which would be incorporated by the city as a nonprofit organization in 1997. Molasky is the founding president of the Neon Museum. In preparation for an eventual museum facility, she and the organization's 18-member volunteer board sought advice from the similar Museum of Neon Art in Los Angeles. The city had a deal to acquire signage from YESCO's storage lot for the new museum. Some of the signs had become severely rusted because of exposure to the elements, and private donations would be responsible for restoring them. The storage lot and various signs had made film appearances in Mars Attacks! (1996) and Vegas Vacation (1997). The site later received dozens of tour requests every week that had to be turned down; YESCO lacked the time needed to give tours, and the frequent requests were one reason for the company's support of the Neon Museum. YESCO eventually made plans to close its storage lot, allowing more room for its sign manufacturing. In 2000, the city council granted the Neon Museum a site on North Las Vegas Boulevard, near Cashman Field, to store its neon collection. The site was 0.66 acres (0.27 ha), and with adjacent land located just south, the museum later expanded to 2.27 acres (0.92 ha). The site, located north of Fremont Street, is leased to the museum for $1 a year. YESCO continued using its storage lot into 2001, when the company began transferring signs to the Neon Museum's lot, known as the Neon Boneyard. It was open to the public by appointment only, starting later in 2001. By the following year, the site had 75 signs. As of 2003, the museum had expanded south to the adjacent land, where a second boneyard took shape. The collection grew to more than 200 signs as of 2006, with 50 coming from YESCO's storage site. The Neon Museum was popular for photo shoots but otherwise was largely unknown among the general public, averaging 1,800 tour-goers each year as of 2007.
La Concha project and public opening
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