Is Downtown Vegas Safe?
Many keep asking if the area of and around Fremont Street (downtown Vegas) is safe. The short answer is yes. However, this is the long answer:
in the past, the moment you stepped out of the main tourist area right on Fremont Street, you would feel quite unsafe, just because many people perceived as ‘dubious’ would roam around. Nothing ever happened to us, but the ‘feeling’, the ‘uncertainty’ was there. These days Fremont Street is completely safe and, increasingly so, the areas around it.
However, downtown Vegas, because of its relative affordability, tends to attract many wanting to go ‘crazy’ on alcohol, enjoy the free live bands and just have a good time at a relative low cost; at around midnight you can clearly begin to smell the alcohol around some people and, a few of them, go a little ‘wild’ (screaming, etc). But the significant presence of the police walking along Fremont St will probably dissipate any concern that one may have.
The very short area between Plaza and Main Street Station (where the beautiful ‘old train’ used to be before it was moved – we have a video of this) is not very crowded and may feel a bit ‘too quiet’ late night, but it’s well lit and we never felt unsafe there either.
Just as an example of how important for Vegas keeping the downtown area safe and attractive to tourists is: there were some incidents where street performers along Fremont Street were hassling some tourists for money after taking a picture, (for example); this has been addressed quite well by the increased police force in the area by potential plans to place signs informing visitors that they are not obliged to tip street performers. You can read more about it on the Las Vegas Review Journal (the link should take you directly to the article, please let us know if at some point it no longer works).
We were on Fremont Street (for the light show and to video review the whole area again) recently and felt completely safe. If you found this page useful, let it know via our social media buttons, thank you 🙂