Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

‘Protectors of history’ honored for decades of activism in Southern Nevada

Husband-wife duo credited for their key roles in preserving Las Vegas Springs, other sites

Frog Habitat At Springs Preserve

Steve Marcus

A small pond, home to the relict leopard frog, is shown at Cottonwood Grove in the Las Vegas Springs Preserve Tuesday, May 21, 2019.

Click to enlarge photo

Claude Nelson Warren and Elizabeth von Till Warren attend the groundbreaking in 2007 for the Springs Preserve. Last week, the couple was honored for their decadeslong preservation efforts. Elizabeth, who died last month at age 87, was honored posthumously.

Just days before her death last month, Elizabeth von Till Warren received, perhaps, the gift of a lifetime at her 87th birthday celebration.

The party, with her husband, Claude Nelson Warren, two of their four children and most of her 11 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren in attendance, included plenty of mint chocolate chip ice cream, one of Elizabeth’s favorite indulgences.

The occasion also marked Elizabeth and Claude’s first trip, since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic more than a year earlier, away from the Las Vegas assisted living facility they called home.

The party had another surprise.

The Warrens’ children let the parents in on a big secret: The couple would be among a group of nine individuals to be honored by the Las Vegas Historic Preservation Commission with Excellence in Preservation awards.

Upon hearing the news, according to her son, Jonathan Warren, Elizabeth immediately sported a smile from ear to ear. She died a few days later.

The commission presented the awards during a meeting last week at City Hall. It honored Elizabeth posthumously for her “more than three decades worth of tireless efforts to advocate for the preservation of historic places in Las Vegas, including the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort, the Las Vegas Springs (Big Springs) archaeological site, the Historic Fifth Street School, Las Vegas High School and the Huntridge Theater.”

Claude, 89, a retired UNLV anthropology professor who now suffers bouts of dementia, was honored for his “more than three decades of archaeological research efforts, documenting and preserving historic places in Las Vegas, including the Old Mormon Fort, the Helen Stewart Cemetery and the Las Vegas Springs,” the commission noted.

“These were not only historians, they were protectors of history,” said Bob Stoldal, chairman of Historic Preservation Commission “In many ways, the Las Vegas Springs Preserve was saved by their work. They would talk to reporters and to anyone who would listen about how important the springs were in the history of Las Vegas.”

In 1972, Claude’s archaeological survey of Big Springs helped to kill a proposal to build a section of U.S. Highway 95 over the site. During his survey, he discovered artifacts like pottery, arrowheads and milling stones from thousands of years ago, which ultimately led the city to scrap the plan. That’s why U.S. 95 west of downtown wraps around what is now the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, 180 acres featuring nature trails, botanical gardens, museums, family events, traveling exhibits, and other attractions.

“Some people call it Claude’s Curve. He always got a kick out of that,” said Jonathan Warren, one of the couple’s sons who is now chairman of the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts and honorary consul of the principality of Monaco in Las Vegas.

More than a decade after the highway proposal, the Warrens found themselves fighting to preserve Big Springs again.

In the later half of the 1980s, the city wanted to build a basin to hold stormwater runoff near the Big Springs archaeological site, Jonathan recalled. Officials ignored Elizabeth and her group, Friends of the Big Springs, who pushed the City Council to vote down the proposal.

Claude wrangled with then-Mayor Ron Lurie over the plans. Elizabeth told her son, “Your father just had a showdown with Mayor Lurie,” Jonathan said.

The heated argument ended with an agreement to meet at Big Springs on a Saturday morning. To Lurie’s surprise, Claude arrived at the meeting with about 100 supporters.

Lurie’s response, according to Jonathan Warren: “He said, ‘You didn’t tell me you were inviting the whole town.’”

The meeting won over Lurie’s support of the springs.

To Elizabeth, the springs — which had been Las Vegas’ original water source and had lasted thousands of years before they had dried up in 1962, offered a warning about water conservation. The aquifer was drained just five years after a state engineer initiated a project to redirect it into wells and “squeeze out every drop for human consumption,” she wrote in her doctoral dissertation, “History of the Las Vegas Springs: A Disappeared Resource.”

The springs’ water supply came under threat as soon as settlers — “intruding Europeans who brought with them different ideas of land and water use that imposed a heavy pressure,” she wrote — arrived in the area. In the 1940s, geologists warned officials the Big Springs water supply wouldn’t last, yet development and well-drilling continued.

Elizabeth saw herself as David against Goliath in her battles with rich developers who had strong political influence, said Peter Michel, director of special collections and archives at UNLV Libraries and a former co-worker with her at UNLV when she was archivist for the Nevada Women’s Archive.

“She had this idea that she was shouting into the wind and thought no one was listening to her. But they were,” Michel said.

Among the listeners was the Historic Preservation Commission, which presents its awards each May.

“It speaks highly of the city that they recognize the work,” said the Warrens’ other son, Louis, who is an environmental history professor at University of California, Davis. “That’s such a good feeling. All that work my folks did, people do understand what it means.”

The couple also were instrumental in saving other pieces of history in and around Las Vegas.

When a casino was proposed for the site of the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort — home to the oldest structure in Las Vegas — Elizabeth headed a group, “Hold the Fort,” and Claude voluntarily began an archaeological survey and excavation of the area. The work included exhumation and removal of all the graves of early settlers in the nearby Helen Stewart graveyard, for reinterment at another cemetery. The work successfully stopped the development and led to creation of the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park.

In the early 2000s, Elizabeth was also instrumental in helping to preserve the Historic Fifth Street School, Las Vegas High School, and the Huntridge Theater (for which she won placement on the National Register of Historic Places). She was also the historic interpreter for the effort to commemorate and memorialize the Las Vegas Pioneer Trail.

“To understand your past is to be enlightened and they saw that as invaluable,” Jonathan Warren said of his parents.

It is a lesson not lost on the Las Vegas Historic Preservation Commission and Stoldal.

“Liz was passionate with a capital P about the preservation of our history in Las Vegas,” he said.

Debra March, mayor of Henderson, remembers being involved on archaeological digs with the Warrens.

“They really believed in, and rightfully so, how important these historic resources are to us,” said March, a former park ranger at Spring Mountain Ranch. “It’s so easy for folks to plow them under, but this is our history, this is what defines our community. If we don’t protect our history, shame on us.”

After last week’s awards ceremony, Jonathan reflected on what his parents efforts on behalf of the public interest.

“What I remember most about my parents’ careers is them fighting like hell to save the places and artifacts that define our history and culture. It was never some cerebral academic debate. It was always a knock-down, drag-out (fight). I couldn’t be prouder of them.”