This is an IHeart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories, and we've told stories from many of the museums across this great country.

Today, we have Aaron Berger, executive director of the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, the capital of Neon,

to share the history of Las Vegas

and the iconic signage associated with it.

A unique aspect of signage is that in many cases, the building itself doesn't own the sign,

even if it's attached to the building. It's actually leased by the sign maker.

And so the sign maker actually owns that piece of property.

And so you can raise a building, but the sign often goes back to the original sign maker.

And they, you know, have what's called a bone yard, which is a place for them to pull parts,

pull neon tubing, pull lights, pull mechanics.

And so these concerned citizens in 96 started meeting with various sign makers and saying, you know,

we'd like to make sure that these parts of history don't necessarily get used to create new signage,

but we actually save the

original pieces themselves. It's fascinating to me to be able to tell the story of history

using such an unusual medium, right? So we're using outdoor signage to tell you the story of

Las Vegas history. It took until 2012 for us to actually open our facility in our current space, which is on

Las Vegas Boulevard.

We're a little under three acres of property.

We have four physical components to the Neon Museum.

The first that's hard to say it's my favorite, but I'd say it's probably my favorite,

is actually the physical building, the lobby that you enter.

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