Public can help archaeologists find early LV history

Friday, Jan. 16, 1998 | 10:42 a.m.

Archaeologists and interested amateurs dug picks and shovels into the desert soil at the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort Thursday in an effort to find buried walls before the development of a state park begins.

The fort will be rebuilt from a remnant under excavation this weekend with $2 million from a $47 million parks and wildlife state bond approved by voters in 1990.

The new state park will preserve and protect the limestone foundations, if they are discovered, and other artifacts dating back 2,000 years to Virgin River Anasazis who came to refresh themselves at the springs.

This Las Vegas site and Logandale are as far West as the Virgin River Anasazi tribe has been traced, said Phares Woods, who has cared for the fort since the first excavation in 1993.

When the park is completed in 2005, Woods said an interpretive trail with recirculating spring waters will tell the story of the fort beginning with the Indians and through the Spanish explorers, the Mormon pioneers and the railroad.

"That encompasses every period of the American West in three acres," he said.

It's unusual that an intact historical site survived the urban sprawl that paved over most of Las Vegas. The area is rich in fragments of how early builders protected adobe, Woods said. The limestone acted as a barrier to moisture from the ground eating into the adobe.

"This is amazing that this is still here and that it hasn't been paved over," senior crew supervisor Wendy Nettles said.

"History seems to disappear so quickly around here," the archaeology graduate from Florida State University said.

"Lots of work went into this fort," principal archaeologist John Hohmann of Louis Berger & Associates said as workers hunted for traces of dried adobe mud and limestone rocks used in its foundation.

The source of large amounts of limestone used in the fort's foundation remains a mystery, Hohmann said. "The old Las Vegas Creek bed has some limestone deposits, but not enough to build this fort," he said.

Working alongside six professional archaeologists were more than 30 volunteers who signed up to help on the dig. The public may visit and participate in the excavation from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Archaeo-Nevada Society members Howard Hahn and Helen Mortenson said. Archaeo-Nevada sponsored the excavation.

Experienced archaeologists will help beginners learn how to dig without destroying crucial artifacts.

The history of the place runs deep.

Long before the 19th century, Spanish explorers had discovered the refreshing springs banked by desert willows, cattails and wire grass growing along the creeks where the old fort was eventually built.

They named the place Las Vegas, meaning "The Meadows" in Spanish.

Mormon missionaries built the fort in 1855 and by the mid-1860s Octavius Decatur Gass bought the settlement. He ran it as a ranch, growing peaches, vegetables and grapes for gallons of wine. A blacksmith was available for horses and restless travelers on the road between Southern California and Salt Lake City.

By 1929, the Bureau of Reclamation was using the building as a gravel and concrete testing laboratory as the federal government constructed Hoover Dam.

Then Archibald Stewart and his wife Helen bought the ranch from Gass and it became a rest stop for weary travelers roaming the Southwest.

Those working at the site today hope it will become a modern visitor's stopover, a place to learn about Las Vegas before the dazzling high-rise casinos appeared on the horizon.