Entrance fees beginning to provide big dividends

Friday, Jan. 22, 1999 | 10:20 a.m.

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area was becoming shabby, as more than 1 million visitors a year explored its vivid, steep sandstone cliffs.

Too few picnic tables, portable toilets and overflowing trash cans at campgrounds such as Oak Creek greeted hikers, campers and day-trippers.

So the Bureau of Land Management began collecting entrance fees in 1997. At $5 a day per car or $20 for a yearlong pass, visitors contributed more than $1 million between November 1997 and November 1998.

After spending $857,500 of the collected money, the BLM has something to show for it, Phillip Guerrero, BLM public-affairs specialist, said.

A new campground with 42 improved campsites opens two miles east of the expanding Visitors Center on Feb. 1. Another 10 sites will be added this year.

"You can be 15 minutes away from downtown Las Vegas and be in the middle of nowhere," Guerrero said, noting it will cost $10 a night to pitch a tent under the stars in a valley with spectacular views of the canyon's peaks.

More parking, along with cleaner and gentler trails, will allow the physically disabled to enjoy Red Rock Canyon's beauty as well, Guerrero said. "We have to provide access for all ages and abilities."

For volunteer coordinator Ed O'Sullivan, the opening of the new campground was approaching too quickly for comfort. O'Sullivan wielded a post-hole digger this week to complete installation of cedar posts to border campground pads.

Eagle Scouts, firefighters remaining from the summer forest-fire crews and halfway house members from Spring Mountain Youth Camp all helped pour concrete pads and install barbecues.

Eventually, camping spots big enough to sleep 100 people will become available, O'Sullivan said.

The BLM's mission is to preserve the natural resources and educate those visitors and 15,000 Clark County schoolchildren a year who flock to the spectacle of Red Rock Canyon, left after an ancient seabed began to rise 225 million years ago.

The layer-cake effect of the ancient ocean's gray carbonate rocks was thrusted over the tan and red sandstone formed about 65 million years ago on the active Keystone fault.

Between 5,000 and 100 years ago, Paiutes, Pueblo and other natives left pictographs -- figures painted on the rocks with charcoal, vegetable and mineral dyes.

Some ancient artists etched or pecked petroglyphs into the dark brown varnish on the rocks.

"After all, this is what made Las Vegas famous, places like Red Rock," Guerrero said.

For the BLM, the multiple uses of Red Rock Canyon and its other lands require a delicate balance between public recreation and preservation.

In order to allow today's visitors to enjoy the natural, breathtaking views, the BLM is improving the 13-mile scenic loop road with better picnic areas and parking.

The scenic drive offers 6 percent of Red Rock Canyon's spectacle, leaving 94 percent of it untouched for climbers and campers who like to rough it, Guerrero said.

The petroglyphs and pictographs are usually up steep canyons in the back country of the 195,610 acres that make up Red Rock Canyon, Guerrero said.

"They tell a story, a story written in stone," he said of the ancient rock art. "It's critical to preserve the Southwest's heritage. There were people here before the Europeans came."

For Larry Clinesmith, interpretive naturalist, the Las Vegas Valley's growth lapping at the entrance to Red Rock Canyon causes concern for the those who love the petroglyphs.

"Education is important," Clinesmith said. "Once they are destroyed by either erosion or vandalism, you can't get them back. People need to know how fragile they are."

The Visitors Center allows people to learn more about the rock pictures through a self-guided tour in five different languages. People may also learn about the Mohave Desert tortoise in a preserve behind the center and can see desert bighorn sheep standing in front of a Styrofoam-and-concrete replica of the area's petroglyphs.

For Guerrero, the most exciting moments at Red Rock Canyon come when a Clark County student marches up a trail and earns a Junior Ranger certificate, pledging to protect and preserve the natural resources.

"That's what the bureau is all about -- conservation," Guerrero said.