Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Sunset Park to mark 50 years with walking tour

Sunset Park - August 2013

Leila Navidi

People enjoy the lake view while fishing at Sunset Park in Las Vegas on Tuesday, August 13, 2013.

Over its 324 acres and spanning the decades, Sunset Park has hosted countless festivals and tournaments, spontaneous community gatherings, birthday parties and even the UNLV football team’s practices in 1971.

On Friday, the regional park’s own 50th birthday will be the occasion to celebrate.

Clark County Museum Administrator Mark Hall-Patton, a frequent contributor to “Pawn Stars,” will lead a free 2-mile walking tour beginning at 11 a.m. Those with mobility issues are asked to RSVP at 702-455-8200 so the county can provide accommodations.

Tour participants should meet at the Parks and Recreation Department’s office in the north-central part of the park (enter off Sunset Road). County Commissioner Mary Beth Scow will speak and a birthday cake will be shared before the tour.

The tour will take place 50 years to the day that the Clark County Commission authorized the purchase of the Houssels Ranch and developed it into the park. Former County Commissioner Lou LaPorta, the only surviving member of the board who voted on the acquisition in 1967, is scheduled to attend.

“We have a history here; things don’t happen in a vacuum,” Hall-Patton said. “Most of us are from somewhere else, and often we don’t know why things are the way they are.”

Hall-Patton will detail the park’s history long before Las Vegas became a city, starting with the Paiute tribe that inhabited the site 1,000 years ago to the development of the Old Spanish Trail.

The trail was developed as a merchant route from Santa Fe to Los Angeles in 1829 by Antonio Armijo. He led a caravan of 60 people and 100 mules. One of the men, Rafael Rivera, was sent to find water and visited the site of Duck Creek at Sunset Park. The creek provided a much-needed source of water during the long trek. John C. Fremont’s report of his 1844 journey from California coined the name Old Spanish Trail and helped encourage national interest in Nevada.

“One word that describes the history of Vegas — it isn’t lights or glitz or glamor — it’s water,” Hall-Patton said. “Without water, we wouldn’t be here.”

Hall-Patten will discuss the original ranch building, the 14-acre man-made lake with its Easter Island head and the Las Vegas Valley's last remaining sand dunes.

A facelift to the largest regional park in the county’s system was completed in 2013. The most recent improvements include new playgrounds, a splash pad, walking trails, shaded picnic areas and open turf areas.

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