Las Vegas Guided Tours

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Las Vegas Guided Tours

Walking tours of Las Vegas with local experts. Discover the history of Las Vegas, Madams and Mobsters.

Guided Small Group Tours • Self-guided Audio Tours • Immersive Tour Experiences

10/31/2026

Happy 162nd birthday, Nevada. 🎂

Nevada became the 36th state on October 31, 1864.

Las Vegas didn't exist yet. And the Strip took another 77 years.

For Nevada Day, we're celebrating a few other birthdays — the resorts that built the Las Vegas Strip.

📍El Rancho Vegas (1941): the first resort on the Strip
📍Flamingo (1946): the mob, and Bugsy Siegel's idea of luxury
📍Sahara (1952): the 1950s building boom
📍Caesars Palace (1966): the first fully themed resort
📍Circus Circus (1968): the first push toward families
📍The Mirage (1989): the start of the megaresort era
📍Bellagio (1998): the luxury era
📍The Cosmopolitan (2010): the post-recession, design-led resort
📍Resorts World (2021): the first new resort built from scratch in more than a decade
📍Fontainebleau (2023): the newest, after years of construction delays

Swipe to see where each of these places actually sits — or once sat — along Las Vegas Boulevard.

Take a full virtual walking tour, with the stories and photos behind every stop, visit our latest article -
https://lasvegasguidedtours.com/blogs/vegas-tips/happy-birthday-nevada-a-virtual-walking-tour-through-the-birthdays-of-the-las-vegas-strip

Happy birthday, Nevada! You've changed a little ✨🥂

10/30/2026

Happy Nevada Day! Nevada became the 36th state on October 31, 1864, a few places to celebrate our state's history:

📍 Springs Preserve and the Nevada State Museum: FREE FOR NEVADA RESIDENTS with ID, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with Nevada-themed activities at both.

📍 Atomic Museum: $15 admission NEVADA DAY DISCOUNT with a Nevada ID, 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

📍 Nevada State Railroad Museum (Boulder City): FREE TRAIN RIDES for all children (adult tickets are $12) all weekend long.

10/18/2026

🎪 Happy 58th Birthday, Circus Circus!

On October 18, 1968, Circus Circus opened at 10pm to a crowd of more than 10,000 people — record attendance for opening night for a Strip casino at that time.

Something that brings me a sense of awe every time I walk through Circus Circus is the sheer size of the vision it took to create it. A permanent circus was a childhood dream of Jay Sarno.

In the late 1800s, when the circus came to town, it was the event of the year. It brought excitement, performers, exotic animals and spectacle. People waited for it to arrive. They dressed up and went to the circus. For a little while, it offered an escape from ordinary life.

That feeling was what Sarno set out to recreate. His $15 million vision became the world's largest permanent circus. The circus still has trapeze artists flying overhead, carnival games, clowns, restaurants, bars and gambling everywhere.

He didn't just build a casino with a circus theme. He took something Americans waited all year to experience and made it permanent in Las Vegas.

58 years later, I still get a sense of thill, excitement and awe every time I walk through here, because I know the history behind it and respect and admire what it took to come to fruition.

Happy Birthday, Circus Circus. Here's to another amazing year. 🎂🎪✨

📷 Photos:
1 Circus Circus Las Vegas - 001.jpg” by Mutari, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified/cropped.
2UNLV Special Collections
3 Jay and Joyce Sarno with Tanya the Elephant, Circus Circus, 1971. Courtesy UNLV Special Collections & Archives, Jay Sarno Photograph Collection.
4-5 Circus Circus opening, October 1968. Ralph Crane / LIFE Magazine

10/15/2026

Do you know the story of the giant gorilla at Circus Circus, or where he ended up? 🦍🎪

If you visited Circus Circus in the early years, you might remember him on the way to the entrance. He was named after a real gorilla, the most famous circus gorilla of all time, Gargantua.

For years, visitors passed by him. Then Circus Circus changed, the old figures came down, and Gargantua was gone. You'd expect a piece of vintage Vegas like that to end up with a collector or at the Neon Museum.

But he did not.

According to accounts of the old Circus Circus figures, the giant gorilla was hauled to a landfill north of Las Vegas and buried.

The more we uncover about Circus Circus the more fascinating it becomes. Even more bizarre, a real gorilla was part of a Circus Circus Midway sideshow act where a woman was transformed into that same gorilla. 🦍

Making for a great story... that one day, at the circus. 🎪

10/13/2026

We're so glad you joined us on a tour of Fremont Street, Audrie! This corner is a throwback to the roaring 20s, make sure you visit when you go to the Golden Gate, the oldest hotel casino in downtown Las Vegas.

10/12/2026

You probably don't remember this version of Circus Circus. 🎪

In 1972, Circus Circus opened its first hotel tower. One of the new features was a Japanese spa and bath.

This original brochure promised guests "native attendants," with separate departments for men and women, an exotic fantasy for adults.

While clowns, trapeze acts and carnival games entertained the family.

The mix is what makes early Circus Circus so interesting.

The deeper we dig into the original Circus Circus, the more bizarre it gets.

We tell more of these stories on our Circus Circus Haunted Mob Tour. Link in bio.

10/10/2026

TAKE YOURSELF ON A HAUNTED WALK DOWN THE LAS VEGAS STRIP 👻

You’ve walked past these casinos. You may even have stayed in them.

But do you know what happened inside them?

We put together a FREE self-guided haunted walk down the Las Vegas Strip — three stops, some seriously dark Vegas history, and no tour ticket required.

🎪 STOP 1 — CIRCUS CIRCUS
Step under the Big Top, where the story gets much darker than clowns and carnival games. Mob history, Tony Spilotro, and ghost stories that have followed the property for decades.

🌴 STOP 2 — FLAMINGO
Bugsy Siegel once had a secret escape route beneath his suite — complete with a hidden ladder, underground passage and getaway garage. And according to Vegas legend, Bugsy may not have entirely left the Flamingo behind.

🔥 STOP 3 — HORSESHOE
Before it was Horseshoe, this was the MGM Grand — site of the catastrophic 1980 fire. Today, stories of unexplained encounters have become part of the property's darker history.

3 STOPS • FREE • SELF-GUIDED

👟 Do it at your own pace. Stop for a drink. Go after dark. And pay attention to what's around you.

We mapped the entire walk and included the stories behind each stop.

👻 SAVE THIS for your next Vegas trip.

👉 Full walking route + haunted stories on the page below:

https://lasvegasguidedtours.com/blogs/vegas-tips/do-your-own-haunted-las-vegas-walk-2-free-self-guided-ghost-tours

10/08/2026

Circus Circus Legend or fact? 🎪

❓An elephant named Tanya played the slot machines during the early days.
❓Baby pink elephants flew above the casino floor.
❓A mother and son haunt Room 123.

Some of these are true and some aren't. On our Circus Circus Haunted Mob Tour, every guest gets a Legend or Fact card with eight stories people tell about Circus Circus. As we walk the property, you'll hear the history behind each one and decide for yourself. Whoever gets the most right takes home a vintage Circus Circus $1 gaming token with the clown on the front, a real piece of old Vegas to keep in your pocket.

Think you already know the answers? Leave your guesses in the comments. We won't spoil them here. You'll have to come on the tour to find out.

Book your spot at the link in bio.

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10/06/2026

We 💚 💜 🩷 Fremont Street! Don't miss the chance to take one of the most recognized and iconic photos in the world, under the Fremont Street canopy of lights.

10/04/2026

On this day in 1982, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal walked out of Tony Roma's on East Sahara, got into his Cadillac Eldorado and turned the key. His car exploded.

Rosenthal had secretly run the Stardust and other Las Vegas casinos connected to the Chicago Outfit, which was one reason he could have been a target, though no one was ever charged and the case remains unsolved.

If the story sounds familiar, Martin Scorsese recreated it in the opening of Casino, although, recent info sheds light on a huge myth there was a steel plate under the drivers seat that deflected the bomb, thus saving Lefty's life. Check the comments for the link!

The building is still there, now a Hustler Hollywood store, but if you're a history, mob, or Casino fan, the site is within walking distance of the Las Vegas strip.

Address

9620 Las Vegas Boulevard S STE E4 #537
Las Vegas, NV
89123

Website

https://lasvegasguidedtours.com/

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