Azia Skeen discovered Las Vegas’s little-known (to tourists, anyway) Arts District by chance. Her plane home to San Diego was delayed, and at 19, she was too young to gamble in the casinos.

With 12 hours to kill, she wandered into the Arts District, an 18-square-block area of low-slung commercial properties and current and former auto-repair shops that’s hidden between the towering Stratosphere and the faded glory of Fremont Street. On Ms. Skeen’s first visit, the neighborhood was in the throes of First Friday, a monthly event that attracts thousands of visitors to venues such as the Arts Factory, home to the studios and small galleries of some two dozen local artists.

“We were accepted immediately, and I hadn’t experienced that,” Ms. Skeen, now 22, said.