Sanctuary: Fountainhead of Las Vegas to serve as urban respite

Jeffrey Libby

Thursday, Dec. 27, 2001 | 9:34 a.m.

On a recent weekday morning at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, the dominant features of a wintry 28-acre detention basin were the orange, folded-up arm of a diesel crane and commuter traffic zinging along U.S. 95.

For now on the 180-acre site that is the birthplace of Las Vegas, it's easy to stumble on vistas as desolate as the Strip on a Sunday morning.

But the Las Vegas Valley Water District, teamed with a private foundation, plans to spend more than $170 million to create one of Las Vegas' first monumental, central public spaces that looks inward -- for the needs of locals, rather than reaching out to yet another planeload of weekend tourists.

"We've got New York, Venice, Paris. We've got every place in the world but Las Vegas. There isn't anything that really anchors this community," Richard Wimmer, deputy general manager of the water district, said. "This site will have as much impact on the culture and fabric of the community as Central Park in New York City."

The comparison to New York's 843-acre park is an ambitious one, but so are the plans for the preserve, due to open in May 2005.

Its trails through cottonwood and mesquite will serve for quiet reflection, but the preserve's planned cafe and gardens should also provide a daily gathering and lunching place for people who live and work downtown.

The preserve will also have a few, but not many, recreational fields. The focus will be more on preserving and restoring fragile habitat for the 100 varieties of birds and other animal life stranded on this eco-island, surrounded on all sides by 20 miles of concrete and asphalt.

Residents will be able to get practical tips on planting desert gardens in their own back yards. Schoolchildren will not likely graduate from high school without traversing the preserve at least a dozen times, Wimmer said. Land is also being put aside for the new home of the state historical museum currently at Lorenzi Park.

"If we don't do anything else, we can let the world know that Bugsy Siegel didn't found Las Vegas," J.C. Davis, a spokesman for the water district, said.

Davis was standing on a small bluff in the northwest corner of the preserve, looking toward the Little Spring House at the dried-up bed of the Las Vegas Creek.

Located at the corner of U.S. 95 and Valley View Boulevard, the squat building marks the fountainhead of Las Vegas -- the Little Spring. It was the northernmost of three springs that fed the Las Vegas Creek into the 1960s. The three eventually dried up as water demand of the growing city lowered the water table. The majority of the valley's water has been pumped from Lake Mead since the 1970s.

The spring house was built in 1917 by the Las Vegas Land and Water Co., a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad, to protect the boiling, roughly 40-foot deep artesian spring from grazing cattle. Eventually the springhouse roof -- only about waist high but about 500 square feet -- provided the dance floor for Las Vegans who had traveled the three miles upstream from Fremont Street for a day in the "country."

Greg Seymour, project archaeologist, has found artifacts at other sites in the preserve that suggest human activity 3,000 to 5,000 years ago.

"Every age of human occupation of Southern Nevada is represented here. It's not specific to one era," Davis said.

That chronology includes the Anasazi, Paiute and Mohave Indians, cattle rustlers, the Mormon settlers of the 1850s, the building of the railroad between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles at the turn of the century, and the establishment in 1905 of Lincoln County (which included what is now Clark County).

Trails will also steer visitors past the Las Vegas Valley's first water treatment facility, built in about 1915 off of Well No. 1. Basically a succession of cement holding tanks under one roof that allowed sand to settle out of the water, the facility gives a good sense of how central water has been to the valley's growth.

For instance, it wasn't until 1928 that the Las Vegas Land and Water Co. built its first reservoir, a 2.5 million-gallon facility complete with a conical roof and an ornate cupola. The weight of all that water pushed water pressure from 2 pounds to 6 pounds, bringing water to the second floor of downtown hotels for the first time.

Today the water district can hold 700 million gallons in a variety of reservoirs under the valley floor, enough water for just two days of typical use in August.

As for the 28-acre detention basin -- what preserve planners refer to as the giant hole in the center of the preserve -- that will also benefit from some modern advancements.

This spring, the water district plans to pipe runoff from downtown Las Vegas into the detention basin and plant new vegetation there. Eventually that cold, industrial vista should be anchored by wild grasses, water and a perimeter of cottonwoods and mesquites.

"It will support more of these guys," Seymour said, pointing out a rare desert cardinal bobbing nearby on a mesquite.

archive