Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Sign

This guide to the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Sign covers a stretch of years when the county that owned it left it dark, and a nearby motel owner named John Woodrum ran his own electrical line across the road to keep it lit at his own expense. It then reaches back to 1959, when salesman Ted Rogich asked commercial artist Betty Willis, who had spent years drawing showgirls for newspaper ads, to design something to greet drivers arriving in the city. The sign's silver-dollar circles and eight-pointed star nod to Nevada's old nickname, the Silver State, and its reverse side carries its own message to drivers heading home.