Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Are you in Las Vegas? You may be surprised

Strip Photos

Steve Marcus

The Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign isn’t actually in Las Vegas.

Just because you’re strolling down the Strip, doesn’t mean you’re in Las Vegas.

When Las Vegas incorporated in 1911, landowners could choose to remain unaffiliated with the new city. That’s why today, most of the Strip — from Sahara Avenue to Mandalay Bay — sits in unincorporated Clark County.

You’d think most locals would know that, but confusion among Southern Nevadans about where municipal boundaries lie — and even where residents themselves live ­— has caused problems for city officials. Municipal workers have had to deny requests for service — think calls for animal control or garbage pickup — from locals who mistakenly believe they live within city limits.

That’s why the city teamed with Code for America last year to develop a website, AmIinLasVegas.com, that tells users whether their location falls within Las Vegas city limits. It was released in spring 2013.

Code for America, a nonprofit organization, partners with municipalities to build Web services to better engage citizens with governments. Las Vegas officials applied for and won a Code for America fellowship, joining New York, Kansas City and San Francisco as project locations.

Lou Huang and two Web developers from San Francisco visited Las Vegas and stayed in the Ogden downtown, where Tony Hsieh and the Downtown Project let them crash. It didn’t take long for the team to learn about the city limit confusion.

“I had been coming to Las Vegas for years,” said Huang, who now works as a developer in the private sector. “None of us knew the Strip wasn’t a part of Las Vegas, until we finally looked up the city boundaries.”

The website is simple enough to use: Type your address into AmIinLasVegas.com and click the “tell me” button. If you’re in Las Vegas, a yellow tag pops up: YES, You are within city limits! If you’re in another municipality, a yellow tag declares: NO, You are not in Las Vegas!

The website pulls information from the city’s site that is otherwise hard to find, Huang said.

AmIinLasVegas.com also has applications beyond helping residents secure municipal services and visitors accurately tag their selfies. Huang said he knows a public defender who uses AmIinLasVegas.com to determine whether cases fall within Las Vegas’ jurisdiction.

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