Las Vegas always had the makings of a great video game setting. Our city’s historical connections to organized crime, the Rat Pack and nearby nuclear testing positioned it as the perfect backdrop to Obsidian Entertainment’s 1950s-inspired, post-war Fallout: New Vegas, one of the greatest role-playing adventures of all time.
Set in 2281, 204 years after nuclear fallout drove millions underground into sealed vaults, Fallout: New Vegas draws from the Old Vegas aesthetic, delivering a charming, retro-futuristic world gamers still get lost in today.
Vegas has been widely featured across every medium. But few projects have handled its history, its landmarks and its icons with as much care as New Vegas. It got our weird, roadside attractions just right and fully rebuilt recreational destinations like Red Rock Canyon. It remade classic casinos based on Strip properties like the Dunes. And it even spotlighted out-of-the-way locations like the sorely missed Bonnie Springs Ranch and the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility. Of course, all these areas were also overrun by massive mutant insects and glowing, radioactive ghouls, but New Vegas still preserves our city’s heart.
After 15 years, you’d think the hype would have died down. But when Amazon Prime released its Fallout TV series in 2024, starring Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins, the internet went wild for it. With season two heading to Las Vegas, fans new and old have been booting up the 2010 game—including us.
Now, after exploring our favorite vaults and carving up a few Deathclaws in the process, we got to thinking. There are real spots here, in and out of city limits, where you can find traces of Fallout in all its unpixellated glory. So why not power up that Pip-Boy and take a trek through the real Mojave Wasteland? Come along, vault dweller. –Amber Sampson
Buffalo Bill's Resort & Casino in Primm
Buffalo Bill's Resort & Casino
In New Vegas, the Bison Steve Hotel takes the place of Primm’s Buffalo Bill’s Resort and Casino, where Bonnie and Clyde’s bullet-ravished “death car” moved in 2022. We’re introduced to a less capable crime couple in Fallout’s universe through Vicki and Vance, whose heinous deeds included “a narrow swath of shoplifting, check-cashing fraud and gas pump drive-offs.” The duo’s car, like that of Bonnie and Clyde, sits on display at the Vicki and Vance Casino, which is based on Whiskey Pete’s. –AS
Atomic Liquors
Atomic Liquors
Downtown Vegas’ Atomic Liquors and New Vegas’ Atomic Wrangler have more in common than an evocative name and a cool vintage neon sign. They’re both friendly watering holes (well, the Wrangler is friendly enough). They’ve both seen their share of mushroom clouds: Tourists and locals used to sit on Atomic Liquors’ rooftop to watch above-ground bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site some 80 miles away. And both offer something that you generally don’t find off-Strip. In New Vegas, that something is gambling, and in real Vegas, it’s a colorful history: Atomic Liquors is considered to be Vegas’ oldest freestanding bar, and has appeared as itself in The Hangover, Drunk History and Martin Scorsese’s Casino.–Geoff Carter
Nipton, California
Nipton, California
New Vegas portrays Nipton as a smoking wreck, claimed by Caesar’s Legion. Bodies are scattered everywhere—crucified, beheaded, burned—save for a few “lottery winners” who are anything but lucky. Real-life Nipton and its New Vegas counterpart are in similar locations (sorta), but the similarities end there. The real Nipton is charming, with a historic hotel and trading post and large-scale art pieces from Burning Man (but no actual burning men). Many of its residents are circus performers with Absinthe producer Spiegelworld, who bought the town for $2.5 million in 2022. Ironically, when it did, the sale of California lottery tickets was temporarily suspended. They’re back now, so we hope you get lucky. –GC
Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings
Pioneer Saloon
Faithfully modeled after Goodsprings’ Pioneer Saloon, New Vegas’ Prospector Saloon is one of the first locations a new player encounters in the Mojave Wasteland. The real-life version, which houses an impressive fan-made shrine, also hosts an annual Fallout fan celebration that drew more than 6,000 people in 2024 and is set to return for its fourth iteration November 14-16. The immersion extends to a real-world maintenance worker named Gordie Siddons, who was immortalized in the game as the dynamite-slinging Easy Pete. –Tyler Schneider
The Retreat on Charleston Peak
The Retreat on Chrleston Peak
You won’t (hopefully) encounter any Super Mutants inhabiting this rustic lodge like they do in New Vegas, but it’s a gorgeous respite, nonetheless. Flanked by snow-capped mountains and ponderosa pines, the Retreat on Charleston Peak is a short, 45-minute venture out of the city, and it’s brought faithfully to life as Jacobstown in New Vegas. Lodge residents like Lily, a retired Super Mutant assassin who’s relatively peaceful when she isn’t wielding her deadly gardening glove, should make your stay memorable. –AS
Old Mormon Fort
Old Mormon Fort
Missionaries built the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park in 1855 to make use of a spring-fed creek that once ran adjacent to the site—creating a rare oasis in the harsh Mojave landscape. That history extends to New Vegas, where a post-nuclear humanitarian faction called the Followers of the Apocalypse uses the fort as a medical hub. There, characters like Julie Farkas and Arcade Gannon work to restore the scientific knowledge of their pre-war forefathers and provide aid to the wasteland’s most vulnerable survivors. –TS
Shan-Gri-La Prehistoric Park
Shan-Gri-La Prehistoric Park
A mashup of Vegas iconography, the motel-based settlement of Novac memorably includes a massive T-Rex-shaped watchtower named Dinky. Its closest real-world counterpart is a similar statue that can be found guarding the front lawn of Steve Springer, a Henderson man who transformed his home into the dinosaur-themed Shan-Gri-La Prehistoric Park in 2006. “Tex” is now a regular stop for Fallout tourists. –TS “Fans have given it a life of its own,” Springer says. –TS
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam
This historic landmark formed the nation’s largest reservoir and also happens to be the site of New Vegas’ final feud, “The Battle for Hoover Dam.” It’s truly an underrated location, as vault dwellers too busy dodging bullets in this big faction fight will see. Not only does New Vegas feature the engineering marvel in its entirety but the actual Hoover Dam Visitor Center, the turbine power plant where you can take real-life tours and the expanse of Colorado River flowing past the concrete. Upstream is also Lake Mead, where New Vegas curiously includes a submerged plane—a reference to a real Boeing B-29 bomber that crashed into the lake in 1948. –AS
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