Overhead, the Fremont Street Experience canopy is the largest LED display screen in the world. The Fremont Street Experience canopy stretches 1,500 feet over the pedestrian mall of Fremont Street, contains 12.5 million LED lights, and hosts free light shows every hour after dark. It was built in 1995 for $70 million as an emergency measure to revive downtown Las Vegas, which had been losing visitors to the newer Strip resorts at a rate that threatened to hollow out the original center of the city.
Fremont Street had been the beating heart of Las Vegas since the city's founding in 1905. The first casinos opened here, the first neon signs blazed here, and for forty years this was the only Las Vegas there was. The Strip's rise in the 1940s and 50s slowly drew tourists away from downtown, and by the 1990s Fremont Street had become a cautionary tale about urban decline — empty storefronts, crime, and a gambling clientele that the resorts politely described as 'value-oriented.'
The canopy worked. Foot traffic returned. The SlotZilla zip line now carries riders the length of the canopy at 35 miles per hour, 114 feet above the crowd. Street performers, live music stages, and bars line both sides. The old casino row — Binion's, the Golden Gate, the Four Queens — still operates beneath it. Downtown Las Vegas is alive again, though it wears its survival somewhat uneasily.