Neon Museum opens its doors with powerful stories and spellbinding artifacts.

It’s a lovely Saturday morning in Downtown Las Vegas, and we’re in the Neon Museum’s Boneyard, standing before the Moulin Rouge sign’s beautifully scripted font as our tour guide discusses the racial segregation of Las Vegas’ past. We’ve already learned about the 1905 land auction that gave birth to Downtown Las Vegas, and that a mere 90 years later, the fantastic lighted and neon signs that came to define the city were being collected by a local arts organization as the only souvenirs of a quickly vanishing past.

On October 27, more than 15 years after being established, the Neon Museum will open to the general public, offering a look at the history of design and architecture in Las Vegas, via the advertising that defined us. The moment arrives after years of hard work by a dedicated few, along with financial uncertainty, as the grassroots nonprofit sought to fund the rescue of signs amid many demolitions. So popular is the Boneyard that museum representatives are already recommending pre-purchased tickets for the $18 daily drop-in tours of the famous lot on Las Vegas Boulevard North, where the conc entration of extraordinarily constructed large-scale signs provides a rich aesthetic walk down Memory Lane.