Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Highway expansion threatens springs

Grasses growing in the dry beds of the Las Vegas Valley Water District's North Well Field are faint reminders that when artesian springs flowed here, the Spanish explorers named it right: Las Vegas or "The Meadows."

Lush stands of cottonwoods along U.S. 95 are shrinking along with groundwater, but a larger threat looms to the 180-acre site.

The Nevada Department of Transportation plans to widen U.S. 95, which winds past the undeveloped water district property. One alternative to reduce the number of homes taken for the widening would cut into the historic area.

"They can have my house," said Cher Blair, who lives on the north side of U.S. 95 near Jones Boulevard. "Just protect the springs."

Blair, a 31-year resident, said she used to swim in the remnants of the springs as a child.

The Big Springs complex supplied the largest drinking water resource to man and animals from prehistoric times to the present.

Las Vegas wouldn't be here today if not for Big Springs, UNLV anthropology Professor Claude Warren said.

Bounded by U.S. 95 on the north, Valley View Boulevard to the west, Alta Drive to the south and by Rancho Circle residents to the east, the springs stopped flowing to the surface in the late 1940s.

The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 after Warren discovered pottery, arrowheads and milling stones dating back 7,000 years.

People from the Pinto or Gypsum cultures could have refreshed themselves at the springs before A.D. 500. "We just don't have enough information from the site," he said. "We don't know anything about this site."

Warren also discovered pottery shards left by the Moapa Valley Pueblo Tribe using the springs as an outpost when traveling as far west as Halloran Springs near Baker, Calif., where they mined for turquoise.

The Paiutes then occupied the springs, followed by Spanish and European explorers, trappers, missionaries and settlers.

The first trading cavern stopped at Big Springs in 1831 or 1832, historians believe.

In 1972, it cost Warren $500 to explore the area where arrowheads, pot fragments and milling stones mixed with hand-painted Coca-Cola bottles from the 1950s.

The environmental studies needed before the springs could become a major highway are astronomical today, he said.

"It would cost them more money than they ever spent on an archaeological site," Warren said.

Historian Elizabeth Warren, wife of Claude Warren, said there are other solutions than building more roads in the valley, an act she considers outmoded. The valley needs a mass transit solution, she said.

"The answer to anything means paving it over," she said. "Without these springs, we wouldn't be here today. This is where Las Vegas began, not some casino."

In addition to prehistoric fragments, parts of buildings, a shack, even an old chicken coop nestle among the grasses and cottonwoods.

Kim Zukosky, an environmental planner with the Southern Nevada Water Authority's resources department, said the site has habitat for the rare bear-claw poppy, birds, animals and insects.

The bear-claw poppy, white and yellow flowering plants, are fenced within the well field because a DNA analysis showed they are unique to the area. There are three other sites in the Las Vegas Valley hosting poppy populations, but they are different, Zukosky said.

A week ago Zukosky said she spied a shiny black arrowhead made of obsidian at the surface near Big Spring. She has since returned it to the safe haven of the site. "There is so much we need to know."

The Las Vegas Valley Water District is watering the channels to help keep the habitat alive for the plants, animals and birds, she said.

Evidence of continued reliance on the plants and resources at the site include the siting of a gray fox playing in an old wellhouse and coyotes, white-tailed antelope squirrels, red-tail hawks, Cooper's hawks, American kestrels, tree owls and burrowing owls making their homes here.

Mistletoe grows on thorny mesquite bushes in the ancient beds formed by bubbling artesian springs.

Warren patterned his excavation of the site after the work of pioneer Las Vegas dentist John S. Park, who discovered that John C. Fremont and John Wesley Powell refreshed themselves at the springs in 1844.

Mormons came to the valley and settled along the springs.

As early as 1861 a ranch developed there and in the late 1870s, Octavius Gass incorporated 360 acres as the Las Vegas Ranch.

Gass lost the ranch to Archibald and Helen Stewart. Helen ran the ranch until 1902, after her husband was killed in a duel defending her.

In the early 1900s, the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City Railroad Co. bought the ranch, later forming the Las Vegas Land & Water Co.

In the 1950s, the Las Vegas Valley Water District was created and took title to the Big Springs area.

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