Las Vegas is somewhat unusual among the cities of the United States in that it consistently uses illuminated street name signs at every signal-controlled intersection. Although many cities use illuminated signs at key intersections in areas with nightlife, and this is becoming more common now that LED signage is available on the market, Las Vegas has been using illuminated signage for a very long time. Fortunately, Las Vegas has an unusual amount of road history captured on film, because it is full of tourists and tourists love vacation photos, and signs turn up in them pretty frequently. So here is a timeline of Las Vegas signage from the late 20th century through the modern day.
A note about city limitsOne aspect of Las Vegas that most geography geeks know about is how little of "Las Vegas" is actually in the limits of City of Las Vegas. We are going to ignore the distinction between Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County for most of this post, because, for the most part it's surprisingly irrelevant—street name sign standards are coordinated by the Southern Nevada Regional Transit Commission (RTC), which in addition to being Clark County's transit operator is also the MPO for Southern Nevada. RTC was founded in 1965, so I have no reason to believe that RTC was not involved in the standardization of street name signs during the entire era covered by this post.
Interestingly, for most of the time this post covers, the city of North Las Vegas (probably because of its lesser economic status compared with the City of Las Vegas and Clark County) was not using illuminated signage at all. Instead, it was using retroreflective aluminum signage like you'd see in every other city in the US. However, it implemented the same RTC design standards, meaning that each of them also exists in aluminum form—many of them still extant within NLV to this day. NLV is now slowly installing illuminated signage, invariably following the most recent (2013) spec, including the green background, rather than the blue that they use on their street-level blades.
1977 specThrough much of what people consider the "golden era" of Las Vegas, from its early days as a small town through the Rat Pack era, Las Vegas had the typical street furniture you would expect of a city its size—side-mounted signals. In cases where overhead signals were warranted, guyed mastarms virtually identical to those in New York City were used. These were paired with all-caps white on green street name blades, typically using Series B. These weren't really anything special, so I won't cover them here.
In the mid-1970s, Las Vegas began installing overhead mastarm signals. From the very start, these were accompanied by fluorescent-tube backlit street name sign boxes. The most-frequently-used manufacturer of these was Nu-Art, whose logo appears on the endcaps of most of these signs. The first photographic evidence I have of these dates to October 1977 (photo by Matt Miller, via Vintage Las Vegas (https://vintagelasvegas.com/)):
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/cc873518d5747612b5239b0ce02acf6d/53ba0e5ec8ac0bfd-13/s1280x1920/078a6eabfd0fec2085d65810778093422cd69110.jpg)
(It is difficult to tell that this sign is a backlit sign of the type typical in Las Vegas today from this photo, but the same sign appears in other photos in the 1980s, through the demolition of the Dunes and the retirement of the name "Dunes-Flamingo Road", which make it clear that it is indeed a backlit sign.)
The graphic design of the actual signs is plain but serviceable; it is a simple line of white mixed-case Series E text on a green background, with a white border. It is basically a backlit version of what Shawnee, Kansas uses. (So there's your connection between Shawnee, Kansas and Las Vegas, if you were looking for one for some reason.)
One unusual feature of many of the signs of this era is that on many of them the font is not quite correct; instead a custom typeface, with a few minor changes from genuine Series E, is used. This 1983 photo posted by Vintage Las Vegas shows the custom typeface, along with a different mounting method above the pole to allow the illuminated street name sign to be used with a California-style curved mast. A similar method was used to retrofit the old guyed mastarms with illuminated signage.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/808ee620a5b82857840a80ebb68e17cf/804a91146515e816-e9/s1280x1920/65d5743700e2662c70da2664f06eab62901fa14d.png)
It's a little hard to tell this is not genuine Series E from this particular string of glyphs, but this exact font appears on backlit signage in other cities, leading me to suspect it was the creation of Nu-Art itself, which may have provided pre-installed sign panels along with the housing. This 2024 photo by me shows the typeface in use on a Nu-Art installation in Reno:
(https://i.imgur.com/RpKYSM3.jpeg)
Note the unusual bend in the lowercase t and tail of the y. A few signs using this typeface have hung on in Las Vegas, mostly in not-so-good neighborhoods, on the back side of the signs where it's less likely to be a maintenance priority.
(https://i.imgur.com/KPy9zxk.jpeg)
(Photo by me, Rancho Drive (old US 95) and Cheyenne Avenue, 2024)
Las Vegas later adopted a feature which I have not seen in any other city: block number information included on a separate sign cantilevered to the right of the mast. The standards for the block number sign are carried on the Southern Nevada RTC website as standard drawing No. 819 (https://rtcws.rtcsnv.com/mpo/streets/files/Drawings/PDF/819.pdf) (PDF link). Drawing No. 819 is dated 4-9-98, but the earliest attestation I can see of the block number sign is from 1997 (photo from Vintage Las Vegas):
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/6744c6d6261c681b06a54f52e7d28df1/tumblr_pteni7HMCq1s0vozto2_1280.jpg)
You can see that genuine Series E is now in use by this time.
2005 specOther than the addition of the block number sign, Las Vegas street name signs changed very little for nearly thirty years. In 2005, however, a radical change was implemented. While mixed-case typography is now considered standard for modern signs, Las Vegas moved "backward", and switched to all caps with the implementation of Drawing 818.1 (https://rtcws.rtcsnv.com/mpo/streets/files/Drawings/PDF/818.1.pdf) on 11/10/05.
(https://i.imgur.com/iOk2BEt.jpeg)
(Photo by me, Charleston and Rainbow, 2024)
This spec is oddly persnickety for a street name sign:
Quote from: Drawing 818.1LETTERS SHALL BE 8" SERIES E AND UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED BY THE TRAFFIC ENGINEER, SHALL BE
ALL UPPERCASE WITH NO STREET NAME SUFFIX. IF NECESSARY TO MAKE SPACING FIT, REDUCE TO 8" SERIES D. SPACING BETWEEN LETTERS MAY BE INCREASED BY UP TO 25% (MAX) TO ACHIEVE 4" END SPACES.
The result, though, is a street name sign which is very clean and easy to read, and is quite classy, like a green-and-white version of the classic 1965 San Francisco spec.
(https://i.imgur.com/3nuqPMD.jpeg)
(Photo by me, Buffalo and Washington, 2024)
Interestingly, while the spec insists on leaving off the street name suffix "unless otherwise specified by the traffic engineer", Clark County seems to have had trouble following that guidance. While it's obvious why "LAS VEGAS BL" would include the suffix to avoid ambiguity, it's a little less obvious why "FLAMINGO RD" might (sometimes but not always) need it:
(https://i.imgur.com/sJmKBrj.png)
(GSV, Flamingo and I-15, January 2025)
Or what the point of this was, other than frippery:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Rue_De_-_Monte_Carlo_-_Casino_-_Jabbawockeez_-_panoramio.jpg/960px-Rue_De_-_Monte_Carlo_-_Casino_-_Jabbawockeez_-_panoramio.jpg)
(From Wikimedia Commons, by Hänsel und Gretel, CC-BY-SA, October 2011)
Besides the unwarranted inclusion of suffixes, there was another unfortunate tendency during this era, at least in the city of Las Vegas—rather than Series E, as the spec specified, sometimes Series E(M) was substituted. The result looked pretty stupid, especially as the smaller counter spaces of E(M) causes the text to get washed out when lit.
(https://i.imgur.com/3mK2vXH.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/mW31bR1.jpeg)
(Photos by me, Durango and Cheyenne and Rampart, 2025—this was the first time it had rained for some three-digit number of days, so I wanted to get out of the house)
There is one other quirk to this style. Somehow it also exists in mixed case. I have no idea what the provenance of this style is, as I don't think it was ever an official spec; I suspect the City of Las Vegas uses it when it needs to replace-in-kind a 2005-spec sign, post-2009 MUTCD, and the housing is short enough that the modern spec won't fit.
(https://i.imgur.com/lqYldzQ.jpeg)
(Photo by me, Durango and Cheyenne and Rampart, 2025)
Summerlin styleAt some point between 2005 and 2013, RTC decided to dispense with the block number signs altogether, and move that information onto the backlit sign itself. This necessitated larger signs and narrower characters, so all text shifted to Series D. The suffix was reintroduced as well, appearing stacked above the block number on the right side of the sign. The cardinal direction is broken off of the block number, and now appears, superscripted, before the street name.
(https://i.imgur.com/wuehbFW.png)
(GSV)
I don't know when this spec was instituted, as it no longer exists on the RTC site. However, this seems to have been the current style when much of Summerlin was built, as the signage in that part of town is nearly exclusively this style, so I'm calling it "Summerlin style". (It's also my least favorite of the specs. I'm not sure why, other than the blandness of all-caps Series D; maybe it just has that Summerlin HOA stank on it in my mind, and that turns me off of it. I don't know. Either way, the only time I've willingly taken a picture of one appears to be when I was posting a work request for a burned-out light on one, so GSV it is.)
When older signs with block number signs were upgraded to this and the subsequent 2013 style, the block number sign is normally left in place, so the information appears twice. At least until the block number sign disappears—they seem to have a surprising tendency to get broken in half somehow (wind maybe?). Perhaps that was why RTC decided to do away with them.
This style is the first to be used on LED street name signs, although it isn't very common. I've seen exactly one LED installation using this style, at Pueblo Vista and Vegas drives in quasi-Summerlin.
(https://i.imgur.com/mCns4QG.png)
(GSV, July 2022)
2013 specThe 2009 MUTCD, of course, mandated a return to mixed-case signage, and so Drawing No. 818.S1 (https://rtcws.rtcsnv.com/mpo/streets/files/Drawings/PDF/818.S1.pdf) (PDF link), dated 1/1/2013, was promulgated. It adapts the Summerlin style to mixed case—the layouts are more or less identical. (Drawing No. 818.S1 also includes full specifications for the fluorescent sign housing—I think by this point, Nu-Art had gone under, so this seems like an attempt to archive the construction of the housing itself, so as to make repair or confection of compatible housings easier. It's possible that NDOT saw this drawing, misinterpreted it as Clark County not allowing thin LED signs, confected some according to the standard drawing, and that's how we got fluorescent housings in the I-15/Tropicana project.)
(https://i.imgur.com/6COoqvc.jpeg)
(Photo by me, Charleston and Rainbow, 2024)
Interestingly, there are some subtle differences in font, kerning and layout between City of Las Vegas installations and Clark County installations. The above is a typical City of Las Vegas install; below is typical of Clark County.
(https://i.imgur.com/FPoiop2.jpeg)
(Photo by me, Paradise and Harmon, 2025)
Clark County has become attached to this spec in a big way—for some reason, at some point they seem to have comprehensively upgraded damn near every sign of theirs to this style, to the point that it's actually somewhat difficult to find examples of the older specs in unincorporated Clark County.
The fonts preferred by both Clark County and the City of Las Vegas are the "chocolate" font set, that is, the one that predated the federal lowercase Series D found in the 2004 SHS. However, "vanilla" federal Series D appears frequently throughout the valley, generally on signage installed by contractors. This happens to include just about every LED installation using the 2013 style, like this one downtown:
(https://i.imgur.com/Ipig6Yi.jpeg)
(Photo by me, Las Vegas Blvd and Bridger Avenue, 2025)
This makes sense, as LED signs are mostly installed whenever the mastarms would be replaced due to other work in the area; otherwise, the old fluorescent housings are maintained in place, sometimes with LED guts added to them.
In closing, DEAR GOD WHAT IS THIS THING
(https://i.imgur.com/V1i0xWe.jpeg)
An MPO dictating design standards would cause civil war in NY. Does the MPO have a design manual for its individual members, then?