In 2022, Filipino American journalist Walbert Castillo and several of his cousins made their first pilgrimage to the Philippines. Their grandmother, Marcelina Cebedo, had recently passed, and they felt the time had come to retrace her life story and uncover their own ancestral roots. 

The group piled into planes, boats, barges and trucks to traverse Mindanao, the second largest of the more than 7,000 islands that comprise the Philippines. The most memorable leg of the journey brought them to a cemetery where their ancestors were buried. 

“We were actively looking for their tombstones, and we found our great grandmother and great uncle, but our great grandfather was nowhere to be found,” Castillo recalls. “We lit a candle, said a prayer, and we were going to call it quits. But then—and I can’t explain it to this day—something inside of me told me to dig.”

He found a bamboo stick nearby and started working his way through an entrenched top layer of soil. 

“Lo and behold, he was there this whole time. All we needed to do was dig,” Castillo says. “It’s the craziest metaphor—the idea that our heritage isn’t always hidden, but has been there beneath us all along. It was a full circle moment.”

For Castillo, the trip was the antidote for the “cultural pride without cultural context” he experienced while growing up in suburban Chicago. His discovery marked a turning point that birthed Istorya, a Las Vegas-based Filipino pop-up restaurant that blends an authentic, multi-course culinary experience with an immersive presentation on the history behind each dish. 

“We bring those layers forward with intention, so when people dine with us, they can leave with a deeper understanding of the culture behind the food,” Castillo explains.

Founded in 2023, Istorya is one of many cultural institutions that have found a home in Southern Nevada, where a thriving Filipino community of more than 200,000 has emerged as one of the largest in the U.S.

This corner of the Filipino diaspora literally helped build Las Vegas—from providing some of the workers who constructed the Hoover Dam, to staffing its hotels and casinos and even offsetting a pressing nursing shortage in the 1990s.

This burgeoning population finally gained an official home when Clark County’s Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to establish the Filipino Town cultural district on April 15, 2025. Centered along Maryland Parkway between Flamingo Road and Desert Inn Road, the 1.2-mile corridor was selected for its proliferation of Filipino businesses—anchored by Asian grocery store Seafood City and the Boulevard Mall. 

One year later, the momentum hasn’t slowed as Filipino Town leaders chase visions of what it—and the community it celebrates—could ultimately grow into. 

Deep Roots

There were just five Filipino immigrants living in Clark County in 1920, according to U.S. Census data. Today, they represent the largest ethnic Asian group in Nevada.

If you’ve ever driven down Oquendo Road, you’ve already scratched the surface of this history. It’s named after Rudy Legaspi Oquendo, a Filipino immigrant who arrived in 1930 and went on to split his time working as a deputy sheriff by day and bartender by night.

Another pioneer, Rudy Crisostomo, left his own mark over the course of a decades-long career crafting designs for neon signage displayed at properties like Sands, Dunes, Circus Circus, Luxor, Whiskey Pete’s and Rio.

The 1990s saw Nevada try to overcome a dire shortage of healthcare workers by directly recruiting nurses from the Philippines, kicking off a new era in which more and more Filipinos left their home country—or their adopted home in California—in favor of the Valley’s lower cost of living, business-friendly tax policies and booming casino and healthcare industries.

“People who move from the Philippines often think of Vegas as a natural mainstay place where they see themselves living,” Castillo says. “As a result, that unwavering passion and spirit of hospitality that Filipinos are known for is very much present here.” 

According to Census data, Nevada’s Filipino population has grown more than 300% since 2000—from 51,318 to an estimated 208,828 in 2024. This growth even led the State of Nevada to offer election information and DMV forms translated directly into the predominant native Filipino language of Tagalog.

Ernie Buo, a Philippine-born civil engineer and Filipino Town Board vice president, watched his community multiply at a “continuous, constant pace” since he arrived in 2004. 

“We went from only a handful of local Filipino organizations back then all the way up to 46 now—from groups representing different provinces of the Philippines to the Filipino Nurses Association and the Philippine Institute of Civil Engineers,” Buo says. 

A Sense of Place

Although the Filipino Town designation became official last April, the dedication of a new sign recognizing the distinction came in a massive gathering at the Boulevard Mall on October 9, 2025. Dignitaries and politicians from the Philippines and other U.S. states joined locals in chanting “Mabuhay,” or “long live,” as they celebrated a unique moment for both countries. 

It was a significant step forward, putting Las Vegas in a small group of major U.S. cities with an officially recognized Filipino district—joining prominent enclaves in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It’s the second official cultural district in Clark County, following Little Ethiopia’s 2023 designation.

Another major event came on April 11, when the Filipino Town Board held a marathon anniversary celebration in the Mission Center shopping plaza parking lot. According to Filipino Town Board secretary Corin Ramos, more than 2,000 visitors took part in the daylong festivities, which included a colorful parade, local Filipino food trucks and businesses and an entertainment slate made up of dozens of local Filipino musicians and performers. An iconic jeepney, a public utility vehicle imported directly from the archipelago itself, was an especially popular draw. 

Nearby, off Maryland Parkway, a mural inside Seafood City Supermarket reads: “Celebrating Filipino goodness.” Indeed, the business is much more than just shelves stocked with Filipino foods. For many, it serves up a daily dose of home, complete with Philippines-based chains Jollibee and Red Ribbon Bakeshop and doubling as polling place and the site of an annual Philippine Independence Day celebration each June. 

The Boulevard Mall is another fixture that’s served as a central hub for Filipinos for decades. Filipino-owned businesses now comprise an estimated 15% of its tenants. 

Ronnie Abaldonado—a Las Vegas-based professional breakdancer known for winning season two of MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew with Super Cr3w in 2008 and later claiming an Sports Emmy Award for his work as an NBC commentator at the 2024 Paris Olympics—remembers it as a centerpiece of Filipino youth culture in the ’90s. 

“We used to take the bus to Boulevard Mall, which was a place where we would meet up and go and find other b-boys to battle,” he says. “It’s crazy to see what it looks like now.”

Creating a Legacy

The idea that Filipinos predominantly work in healthcare or hospitality isn’t necessarily false, but it doesn’t quite paint the whole picture.

Las Vegas local and popular comedian Jo Koy may have put it best when he opened his 2020 special In His Elements—filmed in the Philippine capital of Manila—by asking “have you ever met a Filipino?”

“If you’ve been to a hospital then the answer is yes,” Koy quipped. “Every nurse can sing, every nurse can dance, and there’s always one comedian in the emergency room.”

In one line, Koy—who launched his stand-up career in a 1994 open mic night at Buzzy’s Cafe in Las Vegas—managed to reconcile that stereotype with another reality: Filipinos are natural artists. 

In that same special, Koy tapped Abaldonado himself to showcase breakdancing—a sport in which Filipinos have carved their own unique legacy. 

“When you dig deep into the national breaking scene, everyone looks at Vegas like we have the strongest youth because we have three major programs, and most of them are run by Filipinos,” Abaldonado says. “There’s something special about this town.”

For Abaldonado, who owns the local dance studio District Arts, those ties run deep. Referencing the dance crew he started in the ’90s, Full Force—and how members of Full Force went on to join Supercr3w and Vegas Strip headliners the Jabbawockeez—he says Filipinos have actively been building culture since the beginning. 

“When we travel and hear people say that Vegas has no culture, I’m like, ‘We are the culture,’” he says. “This tight-knit group, this circle that knew each other from the ’90s, we built this from nothing to something that’s global. We all kind of made it, and we’re still repping our city.”

Local Filipino American DJ Sam Maxion made a point to memorialize other Filipino contributions to hip-hop when he opened the DJ Museum in Filipino Town last year. Turntables used by Filipino legend DJ Qbert are prominently featured in its showroom, while an external mural accented with the colors of the nation’s flag beckons visitors inside. 

Outside of music and dance, local Filipino painter Gig Depio says it took a bit longer for Filipino artists to gain acceptance in the city’s art circles, however. 

“Back in 2012 and 2013, there was this unspoken rule where we weren’t really welcomed Downtown in the Arts Factory. At the time, it was just for the white guys—and maybe they thought it was too sophisticated for us,” Depio says. “So, I became the guinea pig, went down there and befriended everybody and proved to them that this was not the case. From there, everybody started drifting over.” 

Filipino artists are now some of the most visible contributors to the Valley’s blooming cityscape. Take Depio’s “Beyond the Meadows” mural-sized painting at the new Las Vegas Civic Center. 

“The Filipino art scene and the Downtown art scene sort of became one, all thanks to a handful of people who just wanted to show that this is our community just as much as it is everybody else’s,” Depio says. “We became a force.”

Leading the way

One defining characteristic of the Filipino population is that they tend to be highly educated. According to a 2025 Migration Policy Institute report, 53% of Filipino immigrants over the age of 25 reported attaining at least a bachelor’s degree in 2023—far above the U.S. born rate of 36%.

This is evident in the number of prominent Filipino leaders throughout Southern Nevada—a list that includes Clark County School District Superintendent Jhone Ebert and Nevada Assemblymember Erica Mosca, who was the first Filipina elected to the Nevada Legislature in 2022. 

“For me, my Filipino heritage is really the foundation of my public service,” Mosca says. “We were low income and moved around a lot, and I’m the daughter of working-class immigrants who always cared about education. What I really appreciated was, even if they didn’t have much, they always wanted to help others.”

Echoing the influx of Filipino-born nurses and doctors in the 1990s, Mosca helped usher Assembly Bill 472 through the legislature last year, bolstering an existing J-1 visa program that has brought teachers from the Philippines into Clark County schools since 2017. The bill helps foreign educators with less than a year remaining on their J-1 visas transition to H1-B visas to lengthen their stay and impact. 

“The Philippines is the number one sending country for J-1 visa teachers in Nevada. They’ve been taking hard-to-fill vacancies for a decade, but we’ve had issues with visa companies charging them so much that they actually owe more than when they moved here,” Mosca says of the bill’s impact. 

Prior to Mosca’s historic election, Las Vegas’ Filipino community also broke barriers from the bench. Judge Cedric Kerns became the first Filipino American elected to Las Vegas Municipal Court in 1997, later establishing the Youth Offender Court program. Filipina judge Cheryl Moss—also a grandniece of Oquendo—followed in 2001, presiding over Nevada’s first Gambling Treatment Diversion Court before retiring in 2021. And in 2023, Filipina judge Mari Parladé was elected to the same position.

For Mosca, the significance of these achievements goes well beyond law and policy.

“It means to me, personally, that we’re finally seen. Growing up, I never had a Filipino teacher that looked like me, and I never knew a Filipino politician or thought that this would be the role that I’m in,” Mosca says. “It’s not about being the first, but about making sure there’s a pathway for others. Representation matters, and people have to see themselves in positions of power and success to know there’s a path for them. So, it’s a huge deal.”

Turning the page

No one did more to bring Filipino Town to life than community stalwart Rozita Lee, 91, who moved to Southern Nevada from Hawaii in 1979. Her lifelong advocacy includes helping found the National Federation of Filipino American Associations in 1997 and serving on President Barack Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from 2010 to 2014. 

Having successfully spearheaded the push to establish Filipino Town, Lee resigned as Filipino Town Board president last summer and turned her attention toward developing a new Filipino American Museum at the Boulevard Mall. After several months of hosting limited gatherings and fundraisers, it’s officially set to open to the public on June 12. 

“I’ve always felt that a museum is important in any community, and we’ve never had one,” Lee says. “We’ve had small collections that people would bring to events, but I envisioned a museum telling the full story of our heritage through the modern day.”

To curate the space, Lee turned to influential local Filipino fashion designer David Tupaz, who sourced some of his own personal artifacts as a starting point. He then compiled the museum’s inaugural Ifugao Collection, centered around an indigenous group from the northern Philippines known for their exemplary weaving and woodcarving techniques and for hand crafting the ancient mountainside Banaue Rice Terraces—a UNESCO World Heritage Site that’s often dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

Supporting Lee as the museum’s vice president is Carl Magno, a resident since 2006 and veteran media executive best known for founding the Las Vegas-based FilAmTV Network in 2021. From its physical headquarters in the Boulevard Mall, the network helps bridge the gap between Las Vegas’ Filipino population and their friends and relatives in the Philippines.

“We wanted to capture the Filipino diaspora to America, and share the stories about how they came here, the challenges they faced and their advice to those who would come here in the future,” Magno says. 

Meanwhile, Buo says the Filipino Town Board is keeping an eye out for opportunities to build an educational center dedicated to local Filipino youth.

“We want a place where we can teach the Filipino language to the younger generations, so kids who do not speak Tagalog can get a feel for our culture,” Buo says. “We can also teach them traditions—from recreational activities we used to do when we were younger and even Filipino-specific board games.”

At Istorya, which completed its residency at Durango Social Club on April 29, the plan is to up the ante even further in its next chapter. As Istorya’s resident storyteller, Las Vegas native and Filipina UNLV scholar Ava Cariño works tirelessly to ensure each moment resonates.

She remembers a powerful interaction in which a Muslim Filipino woman told her she never expected to see her culture on display beyond “museum glass.” Another memorable meal shared between a Filipino woman and her white husband “resulted in an open discussion of memories that were unlocked from her past, and the husband being introduced to a new flavor palette.”

“Through this format, you’re able to have deeper, more intimate conversations about place making, diasporic identities and those macro and micro levels that go beyond just eating the food,” Cariño says. “I truly love every second of it.”

Speaking to the Weekly in the Filipino American Museum lobby, between sips of Philippine-grown coffee, Lee echoes Cariño’s optimism. 

“The manifestation of everything that’s happened—Filipino Town and the museum—it’s God’s project,” Lee says. “I’m just so ecstatic that we’re here, and this is only the start. We still have much to do, but we’re so fortunate.”

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