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LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas has had more than its share of museums over the years: the Elvis Museum, the Atomic Testing Museum, the Liberace Museum. A lesser-known museum recently inaugurated night-time tours and it's one with a very strong Utah connection.
It's called The Neon Museum and it pays tribute to one of the things most people remember about Las Vegas: the glitter.
The Neon Museum also testifies to the important role a Utah man and his company had in making Vegas what it is. The old Las Vegas is preserved in a mostly outdoor museum just a few blocks from the city's famous Fremont Street Experience. It's two acres of old signs, the folk-art of the Las Vegas Strip, baking in the sun.
"It is art, it is architecture, it is design, it is advertising," said the museum's director, Danielle Kelly. "It is all of those things in one."
Since this is Vegas, there just had to be a wedding involved. On a recent blistering hot afternoon, an Australian couple posed in front of the ancient neon signs with a professional photographer.
"Well, we just got married at Cupid's Chapel and we're having a photo shoot at The Neon Museum," said the bride, Sarah Tierney. "We wanted something a bit different. We had a Johnny Cash wedding instead of an Elvis one, to be a bit different. And, you know, we like to be left-of-center."
To really appreciate The Neon Museum, it's best to tag along on one of the new night-time tours. Few of the neon lights are actually operable, but they are illuminated by colorful spotlights that capture some of the old feeling of the Las Vegas Strip.
Tour guide Troy Beals led a group of about 20 visitors through the displays, offering explanations of neon lighting technology mixed in with the colorful history of Las Vegas. Beals' tour was peppered with stories about the ups and downs of casinos, saloons and hotels.
"One theory is that the mob shut (the Moulin Rouge) down," Beals said. "They were competing with the mob-owned casino on Fremont Street."
Beals also tells visitors about a Utah company.
"YESCO," Beals said. "The Young Electric Sign Company donated a ton of signs to us. Half our collection is YESCO signs."
One casino would put up a nice big sign. Then he'd go down the street, meet somebody else, and they'd say, 'Hey, I've gotta have one bigger than him.'
–Tom Young Jr.
Kelly estimates a slightly lower proportion. She said about 30 percent of the old signs were created by the Utah company. However, it shows how significant a young man from Ogden, Utah was in creating the famous look of Las Vegas. YESCO founder, Tom Young, Sr. of Ogden was one of the first to see the possibilities for neon in Las Vegas.
"I tell people kind of tongue-in-cheek, he invented big signs in Las Vegas. And he really did," said his son, Tom Young, Jr., who leads the company today as chairman from offices in Salt Lake City.
He said it was the construction of the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas in the 1930's that turned his father into the neon pioneer of the Las Vegas Strip.
"And I remember Dad coming home--I was just a little boy then--and saying 'Oh Mama! Think of all that electricity that's going to be available for our signs there in Las Vegas'," Tom Young Jr. said.
After World War Two, Tom Young, Sr. found eager buyers up and down The Strip. They purchased huge quantities of neon lighting that was mostly manufactured in Utah.
"It was a race, really," Tom Young Jr. said. "One casino would put up a nice big sign. Then he'd go down the street, meet somebody else, and they'd say, 'Hey, I've gotta have one bigger than him.' "
That competitive spirit of store owners pretty much made Las Vegas what we think of today, a visual treat outdoors, tempting people to come on in.
"The way signage was designed and built and utilized in Las Vegas is not like anywhere else in the world," Kelly said.
YESCO displays are still among the biggest players on The Strip, even though Tom Young's beloved neon is fading away in the age of eye-popping digital displays.
"Once a client or a customer sees that," his son said, "they won't look at anything else."
Tom Young's contribution to the history of Las Vegas was recognized years after his death when he was named to the International Gaming Hall of Fame. It's a bit of an irony since his home state of Utah is one of only two states in the nation that ban all forms of gambling.
