2 Best Sights in Las Vegas, Nevada

Easter Island, Machu Picchu, and other celebrated wonders of the world are certainly impressive. But Las Vegas…Las Vegas is a land where jungles thrive and fountains dance in the middle of the desert. It's a place that unites medieval England and ancient Egypt with modern-day Venice, Paris, and New York. It's a never-ending source of irony and improbability where you can turn a chip and a chair into a million dollars, or celebrate your shotgun wedding by shooting machine guns. Where else does such a wonderland exist? Nowhere. But. Vegas.

The smallish city (geographically) is larger than life, with a collective energy (and excess) that somehow feels intimate. Maybe it's the agreeable chimes and intermittent cheers from the casino floor that fade to tranquillity when you enter a sumptuous spa. Maybe it’s the fish flown in nightly from the Mediterranean that lands on your plate. For each individual, Vegas is an equation where you + more = more of you: more chances to explore aspects of your personality that may be confined by the routine of daily life. It's for this reason alone that the "what happens here stays here" phenomenon is shared by so many visitors.

The city itself has a number of different faces. For a dose of history, head Downtown and explore everything from old casinos to a museum that pays homage to the mobsters who built them. For fun, glitz, and glamour, head to the Strip, which itself has three distinct sections (South, Center, North). For outdoor adventure, head west and south, either to the Spring Mountains beyond Summerlin or out to Hoover Dam and Lake Mead—man-made accomplishments of an entirely different sort. Along the way, you can pamper yourself at world-class spas and restaurants, engage in retail therapy at some of the best shopping spots in the world, dance the night away at rocking nightclubs, or—of course—court Lady Luck long enough to strike it rich. With the right itinerary, Vegas even can work for families with young kids.

Clark County Museum

Step into the past (quite literally) at this modest museum, a 30-acre site that features a small exhibit hall with a time-line exhibit about southern Nevada from prehistoric to modern times. The facility also offers a collection of restored historic buildings that depict daily life from different decades in Las Vegas, Boulder City, Henderson, and Goldfield. Other attractions include a replica of a 19th-century frontier print shop and a 1960s wedding chapel that once stood on the Las Vegas Strip. There are also buildings and machinery dating from the turn of the 20th century, a nature trail, and a small ghost town. The museum also hosts a memorial to the 58 people killed in the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting. If you can't get to the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, west of the Strip, this is a worthwhile substitute.

Springs Preserve

This 180-acre complex defies traditional categories, combining botanical gardens, hiking trails, live animal exhibits, an ultramodern interactive museum, and a playground. The overarching theme of the facility is the rich diversity and delicate balance of nature in southern Nevada's deserts. Kids love the simulations of the flash-flood ravine, the re-created Southern Paiute Indian village (complete with grass huts!), and the trackless train, aboard which an engineer explains the role trains played in settling the West. The NV Energy Foundation Sustainability Gallery teaches about eco-friendly living, and a 2016 addition, Boomtown 1905, re-creates a streetscape designed to evoke turn-of-the-20th-century Vegas. There are also a few miles of walking trails that swing you by archaeological sites and may—if you're lucky—bring you face-to-face with some of the local fauna, such as bats, peregrine falcons, and Gila monsters.

The Springs Café provides famished eco-explorers with sustainable choices, like ethically raised cheeseburgers and environmentally mindful salads. The Nevada State Museum, with its famous fossil Ichthyosaur and a number of exhibits on local mining, is on the site (and included with admission) as well.

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