This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

And we've told stories from many of the museums across this great country.

From the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum to the Museum of Bad Art and even the American Banjo Museum.

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.

So the story is actually pretty interesting.

It was officially founded in 1996.

I think one of the great things about Las Vegas is this constant evolution. Every time you visit, if you come by once a year, you're going to see a different landscape and a different cityscape.

But there were volunteers who were concerned about the signage that, especially since they couldn't preserve some of the buildings that were being raised,

they wanted to preserve the signage that was out front. 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.

...