Monday, Sept. 22, 2003 | 11:13 a.m.
Just out of sight of the many motorists speeding along U.S. 95 at Valley View Boulevard, a $166 million effort is under way to reclaim the ancient birthplace of Las Vegas so that it can serve to educate and entertain generations to come.
A cynic might say that the valley is trying to buy its history back with the massive investment in the Las Vegas Springs Preserve. But an optimist would note that unlike the Strip or the new communities around the valley, where billions of dollars have been spent to create something artificial, shiny and new, the natural history of Las Vegas goes back thousands of years, and it does not need to be manufactured.
That history is tied to a fragile but extensive ecosystem, and the presence of a substance that continues to be the single most valuable commodity in the valley: water.
"The history of this community is tied to water, and quite frankly, so is its future. That's the reason (the springs) is the real birthplace of the valley, because it's the source of the water," said Dick Wimmer, deputy general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, which owns the site.
The district is a partner with the Las Vegas Springs Preserve Foundation in the project, which aims to create a museum and interpretive park, incorporating the working water supply system on the 180-acre site around the original source of Las Vegas water. It already contains wells and storage tanks, and heavy work on the park -- as well as renovations and additions to to the water system -- began several months ago.
Visitors to the site will pass landscaping along Alta Drive, a work begun within the last few weeks. On-site, heavy machinery is engaged in the task of moving dirt, laying out patterns for major structures, and developing the pump station, which is to be completed within several months and eventually incorporated into the visitors' attractions when the area opens to the public.
The scheduled opening of the first phase is set to coincide with the Las Vegas Centennial in May 2005, which will be a celebration of the 100 years since a land auction created the city. Included in the first phase of the park will be:
"The average visitor probably won't come to the site to see this, but when they do they will be impressed," said Las Vegas Springs spokesman Jessie Davis.
The plant looks like a giant bunker, with concrete slabs punctured by steel pipes that can deliver millions of gallons of water a day. The springs include 12 wells and three reservoirs. They deliver about 6.5 percent of the valley's water during peak demand periods and continue to be a key piece of the water company's operation. They supply most of downtown and are used as part of the valley-wide effort to push water into the ground to recharge the aquifer. The springs area also includes the water company's largest well field.
"It became apparent that (the plant) was not only a good opportunity to continue operations, but a great opportunity to interpret them," said Wimmer. "We spend millions of dollars on important projects for the community, but then we bury them. They experience it every time they turn on the water, but they never really see it."
Signs of the springs
It's difficult to see Las Vegas Springs driving past on U.S. 95, or for that matter, along Alta Drive or Valley View Boulevard, not far west from downtown. Signs are visible, however, from the landscaping along Alta, the view of heavy construction from Valley View, across from the Meadows mall, or the colorful stylized sun, cloud and water designs on the sound wall along U.S. 95.
The springs area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 after UNLV professor Claude Warren discovered arrowheads, pottery and milling stones. In 1997 when the state proposed to widen U.S. 95, a public outcry forced the protection of the site and helped spur creation of the Las Vegas Springs Preserve Foundation.
The foundation is working to raise another $26 million needed to complete the project's financing and finish the future phases. With that in place, and the state's contribution of a history museum, and all the work to be done on the water works and visitor's center, the final tally will be about $166 million.
Future phases will include:
The springs, reportedly once flowing enough to create swimming holes, dried up in 1962, about eight years after the Las Vegas Valley Water District was created. The first record of Europeans in the area occurs sometime in the early 1800s; in 1844, explorer John C. Fremont maps the springs, which become a stopping point for western travelers and, in the 1850s, Mormon settlers.
The springs are responsible for the name of the city. Las Vegas is Spanish for a fertile lowland or plain. The fertile area that was referred to when the name was given to this portion of Southern Nevada was the land fed by Las Vegas Springs.
The historical record
Before the Spanish gave the area its name, however, Paiutes lived around the springs. And about a thousand years before them -- although the historical record has not been fully analyzed-- at least one family lived there, likely of the Anasazi, a branch of the Pueblo culture in southern and southwest Utah. The family lived in a pit house on the site of the springs preserve. Archaeologists have found pottery, seeds, and charcoal in the pit, an oval about 3 meters across and 20 inches deep. In the middle was the hearth.
The structure was covered with arrow weed, a straight plant, and the beams likely were mesquite, said archeologist Greg Seymour, who is working on the site. Although he's not sure of the height, he said such houses typically allowed three to four feet from floor to ceiling.
The discovery, made about six months ago, builds on past research and takes on an added importance because it could represent more than just the one family.
"It indicates a settlement," Seymour said. "There have been people in the valley for thousands of years, and that's part of what we here at the preserve and other historians are trying to get across."
History helps create a sense of connection with the community, especially important with a valley growth rate driven by a reported 10,000 newcomers a month. While the springs is geared largely toward locals, especially the educational aspects, it also plays a role in explaining to newer residents, and tourists for that matter, that there is a history here.
"People are moving here so quickly, sometimes it takes awhile for them to make that connection," said Seymour. "That's what the springs is about, to help make the sense of place and feeling for the community."
UNLV historian and author Hal Rothman said the Las Vegas Springs project is different in scale from any previous efforts to calculate the valley's history.
"Las Vegas has not been interested in history. Look at what it did to the Strip of the '40s and '50s," he said. "We've done a marginal job of saving historic cottages and stuff like that ... the springs is the first full-scale public effort to document the history of the valley. In that sense it's an ideal place. Rarely do you have historic exhibits on historical sites.
"So what you have is a marvelous attempt to tell the story of the region in a place critical to the history itself."
The modern history -- that of the last 100 years -- includes well derricks that go back to the 1920s, and the springhouse over the former water source, built in 1917 and restored in 1999 using original materials.
Living in the desert
Tying the history into the environment is also part of the program. The cienega already has 120 bird species that come through, said Davis, and the sound wall along U.S. 95 was built in part with straw bales. The maintenance road in the area is built with a type of resin less toxic than normal blacktop.
Janie Greenspun Gale, chairwoman of the Las Vegas Springs Preserve Foundation and a member of its board of trustees, said the preserve also offers an opportunity to teach builders, as well as the public, to work with the desert, instead of plowing it under, covering it with grass and dousing it with water. The valley, with an estimated 1.2 million people sucking up billions of gallons annually, is more parched than usual because of the worst drought on record, and local jurisdictions are enforcing water-use restrictions on homes and businesses.
"People are moving here from L.A and New York and Chicago, and they're used to oak trees and grass. They want their houses to look like they did back east or Beverly Hills," she said. "The builders point the houses with windows to the west, and people wind up using as much air conditioning as they can. They don't understand they're in one of the harshest environments in the world, the Mojave Desert."
But the desert, with its hues of red, yellow, green, tans and browns, and its hidden surprises -- a canyon filled with pine, or ferns in Red Rock -- is also a beautiful and underappreciated landscape, she said. Architecture can reflect that, she said, pointing to the use of color, materials and geometry in such efforts as the Clark County government center.
The springs can entertain with its exhibits (for example, people will be able to stand in front of a simulated flash flood) while teaching about "the environment, sustainable living and renewable energy and a model for that kind of architecture. This is what the springs preserve hopes to accomplish," Gale said. She is a member of the Greenspun family that owns the Las Vegas Sun.
When visitors enter in 2005, they'll walk through a rock ravine about 10-feet high, and the landscaping will use lush but low-water-use flowers, shrubs, cactus and trees. Future displays -- beginning with phase 2 in 2006 -- inside the buildings will feature the scope of valley history, from indigenous dwellers thousands of years ago to the influx of workers who built Hoover Dam. Again, the historical tie to water is key.
"The theme is history, but it's water that drives that history," said Davis. "It looks back and forward. The more we know about water the better we'll be in the future."
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