Ephemera: "The first step in preserving Vegas' past, not demolishing it."

One of the most interesting parts of my Vegas trip was my visit to the Neon Boneyard, a museum dedicated to preserving the city's neon past. The museum isn't open to the public yet, and consists of two parking lots full of vintage signage, rusty metal, and broken glass. You can sign up for a tour on their website, for a very reasonable, tax-deductible donation of $15. Now would be a good time to visit, too: the museum opens to the general public within the next year, and the tours won't be so personal, you won't be able to get close to the signs, and no broken glass!

We had a very sweet and enthusiastic tour guide named Justin who passed on some delightful nuggets of Vegas history.

This giant skull was previously housed on Treasure Island, when it was a family fun resort. Now it's "TI" and there's some sort of sex show out front in the evenings. You can see the skull looking up to the sky from Google Earth.

The Stardust was the first theme hotel that wasn't a 'western' theme. It was the hotel of the Atomic era, and it was the first hotel to take parties of tourists to watch the Atomic bombs detonate at the Nevada Test Site.

The sign was originally a pinkish color, the same color of nuclear fallout. After a bomb would detonate at the Test Site, the whole Nevada sky would light up with pinkish radiation.