A young volunteer for Project GREEN: Friends of Pittman Wash helps during a trail restoration at Pittman Wash in Henderson Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022.
Monday, March 7, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Outdoor recreation areas around the Las Vegas Valley boomed in popularity during pandemic, when grabbing a bite to eat or spending a night at a casino suddenly became impossible because of business closures.
Many sought some of the state’s most famous natural landmarks, such as the Valley of Fire state park, the Lake Mead National Recreation Area or Red Rock Canyon’s National Conservation Area. But for those unable to travel far or those perhaps looking to stay closer to home, Henderson’s Pittman Wash became a hidden gem.
“During the pandemic, it served a really interesting function for the mental health and emotional health of Henderson residents and people around the valley,” said Evelyn Gajowski, president of Project Green: Friends of Pittman Wash, a nonprofit that partners with volunteers, local businesses and the city to preserve and maintain the wash.
“A lot of people were isolating, generally speaking, from their places of employment or the classroom,” she said. “But yet they felt safe because one of the only things you could do is go outside and exercise.”
Since its incorporation in 2004, Project Green has worked with community partners to build paths, post signage and clear out invasive species that threaten the wash’s natural habitat, which Gajowski claims has gone relatively untouched during the development of the valley.
The group formally takes care of about a three-mile stretch of the wash, which runs east-west from roughly Pecos Road to Arroyo Grande Boulevard. Each month, volunteers gather to pick up trash, and maintain pathways and information kiosks that display facts about the area’s native vegetation.
At a volunteer event last month, team members at Henderson’s REI store (a retail chain that sells sporting goods and camping gear) gathered with about 30 other volunteers to continue maintaining one of the valley’s few riparian habitats. The group also rented a truck from the city that came full with landscaping equipment and other tools to help make the job easier.
These monthly events aren’t always focused solely on preservation, though. Next month, for example, sightseers will be welcome to go on a “bird walk” led by an educational specialist with the Nevada Department of Wildlife.
“You don’t have to drive 20-30 minutes like you do to have to get to Lake Mead or Red Rock,” said Kristen Evans, a manager at the REI store. “You can just walk here, you can drive here in just a couple of minutes and you’re in a beautiful area where, yes, you’re in the heart of the city, but you’re also ... in a beautiful natural area as well.”
That wasn’t always the case.
Gajowski, a retired UNLV professor of Shakespearean literature, said she remembers how the wash looked in 2005, when she joined the group.
Putting it bluntly, she said, the area was an eyesore. The grounds were unruly, there wasn’t much to do in the wash and residents in surrounding neighborhoods were concerned about the growing number of homeless people seeking refuge in the area.
That soon changed because of a measure known as Question 1, which was passed by Nevada voters during the 2002 election. The measure, which passed with 59.3% of voters approving, allocated $200 million for land restoration projects.
Henderson officials then gathered with a citizens advisory committee (most of which, Gajowski notes, became founding members of Project Green) and were able to secure a grant for the restoration of Pittman Wash, which receives runoff from Black Mountain and flows into the Las Vegas Wash and ultimately into Lake Mead. The wash is also vital for acting as a natural storm drain, she said.
“It was looked at, kind of, as this sewer and a dumping ground,” Gajowski said. “Now, whether it’s the nature walks, or whether it’s the interpretive signage or the trails themselves, those kinds of positive passive recreation activities have caused a decrease in all the negative ones.”
Curt Chandler, the founding president of Project Green and former civil engineer for the city, worked in Henderson for 20 years before retiring in 2008. He agreed with Gajowski that the area was generally viewed as a dumping ground.
Chandler was instrumental in securing the $300,000 grant that got the wash’s restoration underway, Gajowski said. In the early days of Project Green, Chandler said he recruited teenagers to do service projects and partnered with other conservation groups on the initial restoration.
But above all, he credits Henderson residents for being engaged and telling the city there was a desire to bring the wash back to its natural state.
“They could have just gone in with bulldozers and clean up everything, and that would have been the end of it,” Chandler said. “It turns out that it was one of the few areas left in Green Valley where there was relatively undisturbed space. And people in the neighborhoods seemed to feel they’d like to preserve that.”
The trails now seldom need repairs, except when the occasional storm causes flooding in the wash and damages the trails.
Many Henderson residents relish the wash because of those extensive networks of running and biking trails, as well as the chance to take in views of native plant life, such as cottonwood trees, that aren’t in many other spots in the valley.
“I love taking care of the environment,” said Jared Bouachri, 20, an Eagle Scout who was at the Feb. 26 cleanup. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s important.”
One of the biggest challenges is removing invasive species — ornamental weeds like fountain grass or tamarisks, an especially harmful plant that looks appealing with large purple plumes but deposits large amounts of salt into the soil and thus harms surrounding plant life.
Johnny Jones, chairman of the Southern Nevada Cooperative Weed Management — a partnership of landowners, businesses and people concerned with invasive species —
said tamarisks pose a unique threat because they’re spreading.
“There are some weeds that aren’t noxious, but are obnoxious,” Jones said. “The reason our group will come out here and is concerned about it, we’re finding (tamarisks) at Lake Mead, National Parks and Bureau of Land Management lands, and they can pose a great fire risk if they dry out.”
Gajowski would like to see Henderson or Clark County officials offer protections to Pittman Wash in a way similar to other natural areas, like nearby Wetlands Park. And though it may be a while, if at all, before Pittman receives that recognition, Gajowski and others at Project Green will continue to come out monthly, sometimes more often, and take care of a space they can call a home not too far from home.
“I think this is a different wash. It’s unique,” Gajowski said. “Just in terms of the richness of variety of wildlife and the plants that have been largely untouched.
“You feel like you’re in the middle of the wilderness when you’re down there. But if you look up, you can see on either bank that houses are right there. It’s a miracle, really, that it has survived various attempts to destroy it and develop it and pave it over.”
