1 October: The Route 91 Harvest Festival Shooting (2017)

About

On the night of October 1, 2017, more than 22,000 people were at the Las Vegas Village concert grounds for the last night of the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a country music festival that had been held there every year since 2014. At 10:05 p.m., during the closing performance, a gunman began firing into the crowd from a corner suite on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay, across Las Vegas Boulevard. The gunfire lasted more than ten minutes, ending at 10:15 p.m.

Fifty-eight people were killed and more than 850 were injured, including first responders. Two Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers were among those wounded by gunfire. The gunman took his own life between 10:16 and 10:18 p.m.; officers breached the room at 11:20 p.m. A family assistance center opened at the Thomas & Mack Center at 1 a.m. and moved to the Las Vegas Convention Center that afternoon.

Investigations by Metro police and the FBI concluded that the gunman, a 64-year-old Mesquite resident, acted alone. Investigators found 23 firearms in the suite. The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, after almost a year reviewing the evidence, reported in 2019 that it could find no single clear motive and no ideological cause or grievance against the venue, the festival or the victims. The Clark County Fire Department and Metro published an after-action report on August 24, 2018, so other cities could learn from the response.

The community's answer began within a day. Landscape designers sketched a memorial garden on a napkin on October 2, and volunteers built the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden downtown in four days. Clark County's 1 October Memorial Committee later chose a design for a permanent memorial on land at the edge of the former concert site, and the Clark County Museum now holds a collection of about 22,000 items left at makeshift memorials.

What to expect

The Las Vegas Community Healing Garden at 1015 S. Casino Center Blvd. is a quiet city park built by volunteers in the week after the shooting. It has a wall of remembrance, a grove of trees, flowers, paver walkways and benches, and at its centre a 'tree of life' oak in a heart-shaped planter tiled by victims' families, survivors and residents. The City of Las Vegas lists its hours as 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and holds a remembrance ceremony there every October 1 at 10:05 p.m.

The permanent Forever One Memorial is not yet built. It will stand on two acres at the northeast corner of the former concert site, at Reno Avenue and Giles Street, donated by MGM Resorts International. Clark County says the Vegas Strong Fund is running a three-year fundraising campaign launched in 2024, with the goal of finishing the memorial by the 10th Remembrance in 2027.

More from the 2010s

• The Mob Museum Opens (2012)
• The Smith Center Opens (2012)
• The High Roller Opens (2014)

Before and after

• CityCenter Opens (2009)
• The Raiders Arrive: Allegiant Stadium Opens (2020)

Good to know

• Clark County and the City of Las Vegas refer to the event as '1 October' rather than by the gunman's name or the hotel.
• The Healing Garden is a memorial, not a tourist attraction; visitors are asked to treat it as a place of reflection.
• The chosen memorial design, by JCJ Architecture, features 58 tall beams shaped like candles; a design by OLIN with Andy Scott was named the alternate.
• Clark County displays items from the Clark County Museum's 22,000-piece 1 October collection in the Government Center Rotunda Gallery around each anniversary; in 2025 the exhibit ran September 29 to October 9.
• The 2018 after-action report was written for other emergency agencies and is a public document.

Questions about 1 October: The Route 91 Harvest Festival Shooting (2017)