Although it was based on the memoirs of former Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb, who died last year at age 88 (and about whom you can read more in The First 100 and The Battle for Las Vegas), "Vegas" didn’t shoot a single shot in the real Sin City. Technically, its "Strip" was mainly a reproduction of the old "Glitter Gulch" downtown, a.k.a. Fremont Street (although more as it was in the 1940s than the early-to-mid '60s, when the real-life version of events it was based on occurred). That's where the main featured (fictional) casino, The Savoy, was located and a rendition of the Golden Nugget, along with replicas of a couple of former Strip casinos, including the Stardust and Sahara, courtesy of Hollywood's typical prioritizing of glamour and effect over accuracy. Parts of the show were filmed in Las Vegas all right … Las Vegas, New Mexico, that is, with some bits of Santa Fe thrown in for good measure!
According to the Internet Movie Database, filming for the series proper was relocated to California after the pilot episode was picked up by CBS, with shooting taking place in Los Angeles, Santa Clarita, and Granada Hills. While Las Vegas these days is very amenable to filming (last week saw major nighttime disruption to Strip traffic thanks to the needs of an elaborate car-chase sequence in the new Jason Bourne movie, for example, and 2015 registered as a record-breaking year for the issuance of film permits), the authentic locations featured in "Vegas" today look nothing like they did back in the '60s, plus the logistical considerations of filming an ongoing series in situ would be prohibitive -- one-off scenes, especially if they feature some star-power talent, are a good crowd-puller that casinos will tolerate, but they're not going to be so amenable to any long-term disruption of casino operations.
While constructing a custom set is extremely costly in its own right, for an ongoing series it makes financial sense and allows the director to work in a custom-designed environment, unfettered by real-life considerations like tourists, traffic, flight paths, and so on. Unfortunately, in this instance the series ran for an initial 21 shows in 2013 but was not renewed, much to the disappointment of many, particularly co-star Michael Chiklis -- and probably of the producer who sanctioned the construction of that set, which was designed to have a much longer shelf life.
Even so, while a TV or movie set may look realistic and of lifelike proportions onscreen, in reality the exterior of Fremont Street created for this show was quite a feat of engineering, built to look as if the buildings were 60 feet tall, whereas in reality the set was only 20-feet high above ground -- but with 15-foot-tall supports underground. In other words, the camera does lie and this was never designed to be a permanent structure that future generations might stumble across as some bewildering architectural "folly". You can see a photograph of the set during some "down time" on the show's official website, which CBS has left intact.
For the reasons just outlined, not surprisingly the same can't be said of the set. QoD attempted to reach co-producer, Arthur Sarkissian Productions, but its voice-mailbox was too full to take our call (not a good sign). An anonymous source at co-producer Tree Line Film says they are "pretty sure [the set] was in the Santa Clarita area. That’s where the studios were located. CBS would own the sets," as it had a percentage of the show, and would have dismantled them after the project's demise. "I think I remember when they were doing that," recalled our source.
The days when Hollywood was so profligate that it could build a large, standing set and leave it exposed to the elements are long gone. One of the last examples of this, as it happens, is not far from Las Vegas: Valley of Fire State Park contains a tumbledown ranch, a souvenir from the 1966 film The Professionals. Check it out if you’re in the area, because you probably won’t see its like again.
