Four Queens, Golden Nugget, and Binion's Horseshoe are all names that harken back to the neon glow of old Las Vegas, when Vegas Vic said, "Howdy, Partner" to guests arriving at the old Pioneer Club. Unlike the Vegas Strip, Glitter Gulch has remained, in large part, true to its original spirit, even with the addition of the overhead lightshow called "The Fremont Street Experience."
Still, old Vegas holds a certain charm lost on the newer, more grandiose Mega Resorts created by visionary Steve Wynn, Sheldon Adelson, and other Las Vegas hotel moguls. The casinos range in size from 10,000 (Gold Spike) to 87,000 square feet (Plaza - including their immense-for-downtown-standards Poker room). Compare that to the casino floor of the MGM Grand, which weighs in at 171.000 square feet, and the MGM is still second best to Sam's Town, over on Boulder Highway.
The first casino erected in downtown Vegas was the Hotel Nevada, which opened in 1906. The small casino stayed open as a hotel, bar, and restaurant through most of the prohibition era.
To attract tourists from "The Strip", all the Downtown casino owners clubbed together to create the Fremont Street Experience. It is a gigantic "shelter" over the street with over 12.5 million synchronized LED Modules. Specially designed light shows happen every hour from about 8pm and they are all free. Each show lasts approx 6 minutes. Each show is different to the one before it, but may be the same on a different night. Difficult to explain but really worth seeing.
