It is the original townsite, and the Downtown gaming area was the primary gambling district of Las Vegas prior to the Strip.

As the urban core of the Las Vegas Valley, it features a variety of hotel and business highrises, cultural centers, historical buildings and government institutions, as well as residential and retail developments.

The area was named Las Vegas, which is Spanish for the meadows, in the 1800s because it featured abundant wild grasses, as well as desert spring waters for westward travelers.

Eleven years later, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chose Las Vegas as the site to build a fort halfway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, where they would travel to gather supplies.

Las Vegas was founded as a city in 1905, when 110 acres of land adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks were auctioned in what would become the downtown area.

The influx of construction workers and their families helped Las Vegas avoid economic calamity during the Great Depression.

Following World War II, lavishly decorated hotels, gambling casinos and big-name entertainment became synonymous with Las Vegas.

This canopied, five-block area features 24 million LED lights and 550,000 watts of sound from dusk until midnight during shows held on the top of each hour.

[16] Centered on Main Street and Charleston Boulevard, the area hosts the popular First Friday festival every month featuring art, music and other performances.

In addition to The Smith Center and 18b, The Las Vegas Arts District, there are a number of educational facilities in the Cultural Corridor, located just north of the immediate downtown area.

Also listed is the Las Vegas Post Office and Courthouse, which currently serves as home to The Mob Museum[30] and is one of the few historical neoclassical buildings in the city.

The building that formerly housed the Las Vegas City Hall, and now is home to the corporate headquarters for the online retailer Zappos.com, is a notable example of 1970s modern architecture.

RTC Transit is a public transportation system providing bus service throughout Las Vegas, including the downtown area.

A bus rapid transit link in Las Vegas called the Strip & Downtown Express (previously ACE Gold Line) with limited stops and frequent service was launched in March 2010.

Completed in 2012, the transit terminal serves as a central transfer point for downtown and features 16 vehicle bays for buses and 100 bike racks.

The pilot program is a partnership with Keolis, the city of Las Vegas, and the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada.

However, the smaller downtown casinos earn revenues that pale in comparison to the mega resorts on the Las Vegas Strip further south.

Recently, the opening of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health and the arrival of the new Zappos headquarters downtown has started to attract new medical and technology-oriented businesses to the area.

The downtown area in recent decades has played second fiddle to the larger and more famous Las Vegas Strip, which is located a few miles to the south.

World Market Center Las Vegas consists of three giant buildings, with a total of 5.1 million square feet, in a facility designed by Jon Jerde.

[39] The square footage of World Market Center Las Vegas is greater than both the Willis Tower in Chicago and the Empire State Building in New York City.

[42] The Las Vegas City Hall now operates out of a new building, which, along with the Bonneville Transit center, can serve as an anchor tenant for new development along Main Street.

[43] In addition, Main and Commerce streets in downtown Las Vegas are undergoing major beautification efforts, which started in mid-2014.

[44] Online retailer Zappos made major renovations to the old Las Vegas City Hall, and moved into the building in late 2013, which now houses its corporate headquarters.