If you look at downtown, you’ll notice that Las Vegas Blvd. approaches it at an angle, from southwest to northeast. The reason for this dates back to even before Las Vegas was laid out in the early 20th century.
Due to the terrain of Las Vegas Valley, the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad that ran through it, necessitating the creation of Las Vegas, approached the valley from the northeast and left it at the southwest, roughly along the route of today's I-15.
When the automobile road was built from California, old Highway 91, the surveyors situated it on a due-north trajectory from as far south as today's Southern Highlands Parkway, a little south of M Resort . But if it had continued on that course straight north, it would have crossed the railroad behind Circus Circus, cut through Palace Station, and bypassed downtown completely by about a mile to the west.
Instead, as it neared the railway, it veered northeast and paralleled the tracks into downtown.
Thus the railroad barons, who got here first, literally set the pattern for the future of Sin City.