Los Angeles to Las Vegas drive: Distance, time & road trip attractions

Road trip attractions on the Los Angeles to Las Vegas drive include the San Gabriel Mountains, Mojave Desert and Whiskey Pete’s casino. By car, the distance from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is 270 miles. That makes for a driving time of around 4h5m.

Los Angeles to Las Vegas distance and driving time

By car, the distance from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is 270 miles. You can expect a driving time of around four hours and five minutes.

Los Angeles to Las Vegas road trip review

It’s pretty obvious where the border between California and Nevada is. On one side, there’s nothing, as there has been for seemingly an eternity. It’s not dull nothing, though – far from it. This is a drive that induces slack-jawed wonder – the starkly barren terrain and bone dry mountains reaching up at all angles.

Yet just after the state line, wild desert immediately turns into man-made excess. On the left hand side of the road, an enormous hotel and casino complex – Whiskey Pete’s – monopolises the horizon. On the other side, a giant fashion outlet mall hides two more resorts.

Casinos on the Nevada border

The abrupt change is due to casinos being banned in California and positively worshipped in Nevada. Those pouring over the borderline are almost all en route to one place – Las Vegas – to chance their arm.

I’ve been to Vegas before, but I’ve always flown in. Even arriving by air, it’s possible to see the enormity of the project. But doing so strips out the context. Las Vegas really is in the middle of nowhere.

I’d driven out of LA expecting, dull urban sprawl. The freeways, I thought, would pass through satellite town after satellite town – a ghastly, never-ending and never-changing conurbation.

Los Angeles to Las Vegas drive: The Mojave Desert

The surprising truth is that you don’t really notice the suburban aspects of the drive at all – you’re too busy staring at the San Gabriel mountains, which flank the interstate to the north until, almost imperceptibly, you’re at 4,000ft and starting a descent into the Mojave desert.

It’s at this point in the treeless desert scrub that something clicks. Most large cities tend to be built around a fairly major river. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to name one in LA. (There is one – the Los Angeles River – but it’s a minor affair forced through concrete). The City of Angels is, to all intents and purposes, built on the desert. It’s not unlike an earlier, American, low-rise version of Dubai.

At points, the I-15 gets almost a mile high. And the descents from those mountain passes are done with huge desert valleys as a thoroughly mesmerising horizon.

Los Angeles to Las Vegas road trip: Approaching Las Vegas

Eventually, another crest gives way to something far bigger and outrageous than Whiskey Pete’s on the border. It’s the Stratosphere – Las Vegas’ tallest building – that you see first. And then the other enormous casino resorts quickly come into view. It feels as though they’re a few metres in front of you, but passing a road sign elicits a double-take. They’re actually 14 miles away.

The drive, however, acted as a reminder of the importance of a journey. Dropping in and out of places may be convenient, but it hinders a crucial part of your understanding of those places. They essentially become vacuums.

Arriving in Vegas reminded me, oddly, of arriving in somewhere really rather different: Uluru in Australia. The sense of wonder and enormity is greatly enhanced by travelling for hours through nothing to get there.

More things to do in Las Vegas

Australia to Las Vegas flights | Neon Museum | Red Rock Canyon e-bike tours | Ferrari driving experience | Fremont Street zipline | National Atomic Testing Museum | Hoover Dam.