Review: The Mob Museum

The Mob Museum in Downtown Las Vegas. Photo credit https://themobmuseum.org/ 

By Cale Gressman 

            I recently took a trip to Las Vegas. While I’m not overly fond of cities in general, I will say that the Mob Museum was definitely one of the highlights of the visit. Located in in the old courthouse, in downtown Vegas, just a couple of blocks away from Fremont Street, it has to be one of the best museums I’ve had the pleasure of going to. 

The subject of the museum, as one might surmise, is the history of the American Mob. It covers the general history of organized crime in the country, looking at it on a national level, but also takes the time to focus on the local level. Vegas was in a very real sense built by the Mob or at least Mob money. The museum handles a very broad topic very, very well; giving attention to not only different mob bosses, families, and crimes, but also showing the methodology behind organized crime. 

What’s more, as you walk through the museum you can see the evolution of organized crime as the nation itself evolved. It starts from the early immigrant street gangs, to the bootleggers, to the drug trade, and then even devotes time to exploring the growth of the modern Mexican drug cartels.

The museum does a great job of depicting the true seriousness and brutality of organized crime, not falling into the terrible habit of people to marvel and glorifying the life of a gangster. The one risk a museum like this could fall into is to attempt to lighten the material so as to make it more accessible to everyone, but it does not fall into this trap. It shows the bodies. It shows the blood. It shows the reality. 

The only area of criticism I do have is that it can be a struggle to move through the museum linearly. The museum has three floors, the visitor begins at the top floor which covers the origins and early history of American organized crime. Then one simply descends to the next floor to continue on through history. This works well, but where I had trouble was that the rooms are circular oftentimes, with plaques and artifacts on both sides, it can sometimes be difficult to view linearly if one were to start on the wrong side (as I usually did). Visitors will also have to be patient as the museum makes use of short films to tell many of its stories. However, they are played on a loop so visitors will have to wait for the film to start again if they show up at the wrong time. 

The museum itself is deceivingly large as well (great for this history nerd), so if you're not fond of long walks be warned. The price of admission is also quite steep, however, if one were to get the city pass which allows someone to get tickets to various attractions in Vegas for a quite affordable price then it becomes an excellent deal. However, even for the price I highly recommend this museum. I give it a 9 out of 10.