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Vegas Retold

The history of The Mirage

Opened November 22, 1989 Closed July 17, 2024

Fire erupts from the Mirage’s artificial volcano beside a lagoon, with the hotel’s illuminated entrance and tower carrying Beatles LOVE advertising behind it.
The Mirage’s volcano erupting in front of its hotel tower on January 19, 2014; the outdoor attraction later closed with the resort.

Nandaro / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

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Original photograph retained without editorial alteration. Responsive displays may resize and crop the presentation.

The Mirage made the walk along Las Vegas Boulevard part of the resort experience. Its artificial volcano, lagoon and tropical planting drew attention before visitors reached the casino. Steve Wynn’s hotel-casino opened on November 22, 1989, bringing a South Seas setting to a much larger development than the roadside properties that had preceded it.

Before the Mirage: the Strip Castaways

Part of the land had been occupied by the Strip’s Castaways Hotel and Casino. That earlier property was demolished before the Mirage opened; the change was a redevelopment of the site, not simply a new name on the Castaways building. The Strip Castaways should also be distinguished from the later Castaways name used by the former Showboat elsewhere in Las Vegas.

A stage for Siegfried & Roy

Siegfried & Roy became central to the Mirage’s identity, but their show did not open with the hotel. The Neon Museum records a delayed premiere on February 1, 1990. Their long residency ended after Roy Horn was injured by a tiger during the October 3, 2003 performance. The difference between the hotel’s opening and its headline show’s debut is an important part of the chronology.

New ownership and a renewed volcano

Corporate ownership changed on May 31, 2000, when MGM Grand completed its acquisition of Mirage Resorts. The Mirage continued as the same hotel-casino. Its entertainment and public frontage also evolved: The Beatles LOVE arrived in 2006, and a redesigned volcano premiered in December 2008, combining WET’s fire effects with music by Mickey Hart and Zakir Hussain.

Hard Rock takes over operations

Hard Rock International assumed operations on December 19, 2022. Its acquisition covered the operating assets, while a long-term lease with VICI Properties covered the real estate. An early statement said there were no plans to close the Mirage; that operating plan changed. LOVE ended in July 2024, and the resort closed on July 17.

A closed resort and a changing site

The next phase combines renovation and new construction. The former hotel was to be remodeled and rebranded as Hard Rock, with a guitar-shaped tower replacing the volcano area. This differs from demolishing the entire Mirage, and from moving the former off-Strip Hard Rock hotel to this address. As checked in October 2026, the new operator still describes Hard Rock Las Vegas as coming soon. The illustration and historical photograph depict the Mirage before closure, not an attraction visitors can enter today.

  1. The Mirage’s opening and themed setting

  2. The earlier Strip Castaways site

  3. A different Castaways at the former Showboat

  4. Siegfried & Roy’s Mirage residency

  5. The 2000 corporate acquisition

  6. Redesigning the volcano

  7. The end of The Beatles LOVE

  8. Operating assets and the real-estate lease

  9. Closure and the retained-hotel conversion

  10. The site’s next operating phase

  11. The former hotel and casino building area

What remains uncertain

  • The map uses an approximate building-area point. OpenStreetMap’s outline carries an update warning; historical way references plus current node coordinates are not a complete period survey.
  • The Strip Castaways predecessor is distinct from Showboat’s later Castaways name. Exact former Castaways walls and acquisition timing are not settled by this account.
  • LOVE’s producer pages give July 6 and July 7 differently for its final bow. This account uses July 2024, supported by the July 8 retrospective, without assigning one exact last-performance date.
  • Early Hard Rock statements said the Mirage would stay open. That plan was superseded by the July 2024 closure. Conversion plans and a coming-soon website do not establish an opening date or completion of every proposed feature.
  • The illustration adapts a pre-closure view; the dated historical photograph documents that earlier period. Neither describes a current visitor entrance, show schedule or surviving attraction.

This site through time

Replaced Castaways (Las Vegas Strip)

1987 – 1989

The Strip Castaways closed in 1987 and was demolished as the Mirage site was assembled. The Mirage opened in 1989 on a larger property that included the former Castaways grounds near its northern Strip frontage. This was a replacement development, rather than a renamed Castaways hotel. The former Castaways occupied only part of the later Mirage resort site.

Historical source — UNLV Special Collections, Castaways Hotel Photograph Collection PH-00270, historical background; Mirage opening corroborated by The Neon Museum, The Mirage & Beyond (https://neonmuseum.org/the-mirage-beyond/). Former-site vicinity corroborated by Vintage Las Vegas Strip Index, The Mirage section (https://files.vintagelasvegas.com/strip.html).

  • The former casino footprint has not been reconstructed as a surveyed boundary. The Castaways map pin indicates an approximate former-site vicinity, not the entire later Mirage resort.
  • This relationship concerns the original Strip Castaways, not the former Showboat on Fremont Street that later used the Castaways name.
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