Even seasoned visitors are often surprised by what the city of Las Vegas isn’t. For example, Harry Reid International Airport and many famous Strip casinos sit outside the city’s official boundaries. This geographic quirk hints at deeper oddities beneath the neon. A closer look reveals hidden flood tunnels, submerged ghost towns and more: facts that don’t make the tourist brochures. We’ve compiled ten amazing Las Vegas facts that no one talks about – truths grounded in history, geography and local lore that will astonish anyone who thinks they know the city.
Unknown facts about Las Vegas include:
1. The Strip isn’t actually in Las Vegas. It lies in the unincorporated Clark County areas of Paradise and Winchester.
2. A vast network of flood-control tunnels runs beneath the city. Originally built to channel summer flash floods, these tunnels now shelter an estimated 1,200–1,500 people.
3. Casino pioneer Benny Binion ran a computer through an underground tunnel. In the 1960s he hid an IBM mainframe under the Horseshoe casino (via a tunnel to the Fremont Hotel) to tally slot-machine coins.
4. A ghost town lies beneath Lake Mead. The Mormon settlement of St. Thomas was evacuated and flooded by Hoover Dam; at full pool it sat 60 ft underwater.
5. Vegas’s historic Block 16 was a legal red-light district. From 1905 until the early 1940s, Block 16 downtown hosted licensed brothels and saloons.
6. Atomic bomb tests were a tourist attraction. In the 1950s, hotels held dawn “bomb parties” so guests could watch Nevada nuclear blasts, even hosting an “Atomic Bomb” pin-up contest and themed cocktails.
Most people think the Las Vegas Strip is Las Vegas, but it isn’t. A map shows that Las Vegas city ends at Sahara Avenue – everything south of that (including the Flamingo, Bellagio, MGM Grand, etc.) lies in the Clark County area called Paradise. As one local paper explains, “Paradise is an unincorporated township that encompasses large swaths of the Las Vegas Strip”. In fact, casino owners in the 1950s lobbied to keep the Strip outside city limits as a way to avoid Las Vegas city taxes. When the city threatened annexation, new unincorporated townships were created (first Paradise, then Winchester) to maintain control.
“Paradise is an unincorporated township that encompasses large swaths of the Las Vegas Strip”.
Thus, visitors on the Strip or at the airport are technically in Clark County, not in the City of Las Vegas. Downtown Fremont Street is the only part of “old Las Vegas” that lies within city boundaries; everything south of downtown (the modern resort corridor) belongs to Paradise or Winchester. This odd setup means that local taxes and services differ between downtown and the Strip, a detail most tourists never realize.
Las Vegas has a hidden sub-world: a labyrinth of miles of concrete tunnels. Built starting in the 1990s as storm-drain passages, the network was designed to protect the desert valley from flash floods. In total these drains stretch roughly 600 miles under the city. Instead of water, the tunnels soon carried other things: during Prohibition they served bootleggers, and later they became a refuge for people without homes. Today outreach workers estimate 1,200–1,500 people live in the tunnels.
“Built to protect the desert city from flash floods, the tunnels have become home to hundreds of Las Vegas’ homeless”.
These subterranean corridors are real homes for entire communities. Shanty “tents” and makeshift cabins line the concrete walls. One journalist reported that at least a thousand residents live down there, sleeping beneath the Strip and fleeing the intense daytime heat. Tunnels run near every major downtown casino, and they have legends of their own. (Some say police have even lost suspects down there!) Although the city’s cameras and guards monitor many entrances, no official tourist tours exist due to safety and property concerns.
Vegas lore tells of casino boss Benny Binion using tunnels for high-tech advantage. Under his old Horseshoe Casino (now Binion’s Gambling Hall), Binion had a private tunnel cut to the Fremont Hotel next door. Through this passage, in the 1960s he placed an IBM mainframe computer – one of the first of its kind in gambling. The machine, hidden behind a secret door, automatically counted every dollar coming from the slot machines.
In practice, coins were split: the heavier hard currency was placed in vaults by hand, but “soft” play-credits went into the IBM. This let Binion’s crew track revenue remotely, giving them an edge over competitors who relied on hand tallies. It became a famous story of early data-driven gambling. At the time, Binion reportedly joked that showing customers the transparent accounting (in the cashier’s cage) was only a “theater” – the real counting happened unseen in the tunnel.
Just outside modern Las Vegas, a real ghost town occasionally resurfaces from the water. In the 1800s Mormon pioneers founded the town of St. Thomas, Nevada, along the valley’s springs. But when Hoover Dam (then called Boulder Dam) was built, St. Thomas had to be abandoned. The Bureau of Reclamation bought the land and flooded it in the 1930s to create Lake Mead. Official histories note that St. Thomas was “inundated when Lake Mead first filled up in the 1930s,” leaving the town under water. By 1938, at the lake’s high point the streets of St. Thomas lay 60 feet below the surface.
St. Thomas was a Mormon settlement “inundated when Lake Mead first filled up in the 1930s,” leaving the town completely submerged under the reservoir.
In recent droughts, however, water levels have dropped enough to uncover the ruins. Visitors can now stroll on cracked pavement and spot the outlines of brick buildings from the original 1860s townsite. Lake Mead (the nation’s largest man-made lake when built) thus hides a Vegas precursor – a real underwater ghost town that no tour guide mentions.
Long before Fremont Street was an entertainment zone, one city block was set aside for vice. In 1905 Las Vegas designated Block 16 (two blocks north of today’s Fremont Street) as a special area where gambling and liquor were officially allowed. Saloons, card parlors and brothels sprang up to serve railroad workers, ranch hands and drifters on the Old Spanish Trail. Block 16 became known informally as the town’s red-light district. From its inception it was unique – as one history notes, it was “one of the first city blocks to allow both gambling and liquor”.
“Block 16 was one of the first city blocks to allow both gambling and liquor,” effectively making it Las Vegas’s original vice district.
This arrangement lasted until the World War II era. In 1941 city leaders and the nearby Army Air Field (later Nellis AFB) pressured the closure of vice. By the mid-1940s prostitution was outlawed in Las Vegas and all the Block 16 businesses shut down. Today there is no trace of it beyond old photographs – the area is mostly parking lots and empty soil. But during its heyday, Block 16 earned Las Vegas a reputation as Sin City years before the Strip even existed.
The same network of tunnels and alleyways behind downtown casinos provided escape paths for outlaws. Original engineering tunnels – meant for utilities like plumbing – were co-opted by gangsters and speakeasy owners during Prohibition and afterward. Stories still circulate about “secret doors” in casino basements and hidden underground rooms. It’s said that when raids came, criminals could dash into the tunnels and slip away unseen. Legends even claim bags of cash were rolled down those passages to be laundered off-site.
“Originally designed for plumbing and power lines, these passageways quickly became an unofficial escape system for speakeasy owners and mobsters”.
Whether myth or reality, the network under Fremont Street is entwined with Las Vegas’s mob history. Key figures like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky are known to have operated downtown hotels (El Cortez, Apache Club) connected to the tunnels. It’s also rumored that celebrities of the era (the Rat Pack, Sinatra, even JFK) learned of hidden routes to vanish from crowds. In short, the city’s underworld carved out a secondary transit system beneath our feet, one still largely uncharted and unseen by the public.
During the Hoover Dam construction (1931–1936), another set of “secret” routes was built – this time on the surface. The federal government restricted dam laborers from gambling or drinking in town, so private contractors carved out backcountry roads. These unmarked pathways allowed workers to slip into Las Vegas “without being seen” by supervisors. According to one account, even bootleg liquor was driven over these roads at night during Prohibition.
Historical accounts note that “hidden roads” were constructed so dam workers could reach Las Vegas “without being seen”.
After the dam’s completion, those roads joined with other desert highways. But for a brief period in the 1930s, a traveler using Nevada’s secret backroads could arrive in Vegas undetected – a loophole that kept the casino life accessible despite government bans.
Vegas is famous for ostentatious displays, and it even exhibits the world’s largest gold nugget found by metal detector. The Hand of Faith nugget (61 lbs, about 875 troy ounces) was discovered in Australia in 1980 by a young prospector. He sold it to the Golden Nugget casino in downtown Las Vegas, where it remains encased in glass for public viewing.
Golden Nugget advertises it as “the biggest golden nugget in existence”, a fitting centerpiece for a city built on luck and riches. Visitors can walk up and touch a protective glass, seeing a genuine natural wonder that weighs more than 27 kilograms. (By comparison, the Heart of Gold nugget in the Smithsonian is only about 78 lbs.) This Aussie treasure is a reminder that even in Las Vegas, sometimes the biggest bling comes from the ground, not the jeweler’s counter.
The name Las Vegas actually means “the meadows” in Spanish, a nod to the springs that once made this valley unusually green. In 1829 Spanish explorers led by Rafael Rivera were traveling to California via the Old Spanish Trail when they stumbled on a marshy oasis in the desert. As Nevada State Parks notes, “the Spaniards called the place las vegas, which is Spanish for ‘the meadows’”, because native grasses and artesian wells covered the valley floor. In other words, Las Vegas was a rare natural meadow thanks to hidden water beneath the sand.
Nevada State Parks: “the Spaniards called the place las vegas, which is Spanish for ‘the meadows’”.
That water also drew the first American settlers. In 1855, thirty Mormon missionaries led by William Bringhurst arrived and built a fort by the springs. Their adobe walls – the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort – still stand today as a state historic park on Las Vegas Boulevard. Thus, modern Las Vegas owes its name (and its origin) to long-buried springs and a tiny green oasis in the desert, a history tourists often overlook.
Vegas didn’t just play to neon – it played to nuclear age spectacle. Starting in 1951, the U.S. began atmospheric bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site about 65 miles away. The city’s promoters quickly turned this into a tourist draw. By the mid-’50s, local hotels hosted “dawn patrol” parties: early-morning events where guests gathered on rooftops or balconies to watch distant mushroom clouds. The Chamber of Commerce even printed calendars of scheduled blasts and encouraged tourists to witness the detonations.
Horseshoe casino boss Benny Binion famously declared that “the best thing to happen to Vegas was the Atomic Bomb”, reflecting the economic boom that testing brought. Casinos cooked up novelty “Atomic Cocktails” and held beauty contests like “Miss Atomic Bomb,” featuring models posing with paper mushroom clouds. Flashy signs and showgirl costumes also leaned atomic – one old slogan called Las Vegas “Atomic City, U.S.A.”. Though bizarre by today’s standards, this chapter helped cement Vegas’s image as a place willing to package anything (even a bomb test) as showbiz.
To truly experience Vegas “like a local,” skip the tourist traps and seek the secrets. Many casinos now hide retro speakeasy lounges: for example, Bally’s (now Horseshoe) features The Lock, an unmarked cocktail bar behind a secret door in the lobby. Other insider venues include Ghost Donkey (an underground mezcal bar) and the Lavender Rooftop Lounge at Motel 6 (a former drug den turned hip bar). Beyond bars, there’s the Neon Museum’s Boneyard, where over 250 vintage Vegas signs glow below street level. Even a slice of the famous Strip is hidden: walk upstairs in the Cosmopolitan Hotel and you’ll find the unmarked “Secret Pizza” joint. Artistic oddities hide in plain view – for instance, the multi-room installation Omega Mart lets you browse a surreal supermarket in Area 15. These offbeat stops require some digging to find but reward visitors with stories you won’t see in any guidebook.
No. Nearly all of the Strip (and the airport) lie in Clark County’s unincorporated areas (Paradise and Winchester). The City of Las Vegas officially ends north of the Strip, which is why many famous resorts aren’t in Vegas city limits.
Only very cautiously. A few private groups offer occasional guided trips (the author of Beneath the Neon once led select tours), but there is no public access. The tunnels are on restricted property and can be dangerous, so unsupervised visits are not allowed.
Las Vegas began as a railroad stop in 1905. After the Union Pacific line came through, developers established a town there to serve trains. It was officially incorporated in 1911 as a city in the newly formed Clark County.
By the late 1960s organized crime was largely pushed out. Casino investor Howard Hughes arrived in 1966 and started buying up key casinos. His purchases, along with federal crackdowns and the introduction of new corporate ownership, gradually displaced the old mob families, ending their open control of Vegas.
