Your eyes land on a 30-story black glass pyramid rising from the Nevada desert. This is the Luxor, opened in 1993 by Circus Circus Enterprises, and it represents the apex of Las Vegas's themed-resort craze of the early 1990s. Developers were convinced that turning the Strip into a series of family-friendly fantasy worlds was the future of American tourism. They were not entirely wrong — the Luxor drew enormous crowds — but they underestimated how quickly novelty fades.
The pyramid is clad in 11 acres of glass and originally featured a giant replica Sphinx and an indoor Nile River with boat rides. Many of the Egyptian features were removed or reimagined as the resort repositioned itself for adult audiences in the 2000s. What remains is the structure itself — still visually arresting, still impossible to mistake for anything else.
The most spectacular feature is the SKY Beam, a 315,000-watt light projector at the pyramid's apex that shoots a beam visible from aircraft 275 miles away. On clear nights it is the brightest artificial light beam on Earth. Pilots use it as a navigation reference. Insects swarm it by the billions, which in turn attracts moths, bats, and owls in a miniature nocturnal ecosystem floating above the casino floor. Only in Las Vegas would a building accidentally create its own wildlife habitat.