In 1826, Antonio Armijo, a Mexican trader, set out from Santa Fe in New Mexico on the Old Spanish Trail for southern California. An experienced scout in Armijo’s party, Rafael Rivera, discovered a shortcut along the route by way of Las Vegas’ Big Springs, fresh water that bubbled up to the surface from artesian aquifers that underlay the valley. A creek flowed from the pool at the top of the spring, bordered by lush grasslands and thickets of mesquite and inhabited by birds and small game.
Of course, Southern Paiute had been camping at the springs for upwards of 700 years by then, and archaeological evidence has shown that the springs received human visitors starting around 6000 BCE. But when Armijo stopped at Big Springs in 1826, he named it Las Vegas, "the Meadows." The name stuck and when John C. Fremont passed through Las Vegas Valley in 1844 on a cartography expedition, he put Las Vegas on the map.
Big Springs served as a primary water source for subsequent travelers, Latter-day Saints who established a short-lived mission nearby in the mid-1850s, ranchers who followed the Mormons to settle the valley, and the Salt Lake-Los Angeles railroad that founded Las Vegas as a service stop for its steam-powered locomotives. There’s a good photograph of the desert oasis at http://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/roundup/addl_pages/fabulous.html.
After the city was established in 1905, Big Springs served as a well field, from which pipe delivered water to the northwest valley and downtown Las Vegas. But with more and more residents and businesses tapping into the ground water, the aquifer was depleted; it basically disappeared in the 1930s and Big Springs was essentially forgotten.
Claude Warren, a local archaeologist, got interested in the area and excavated it in 1972. Thanks, in part, to his discovery of pottery, arrowheads, and milling stones dating back 8,000 years, Big Springs was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
Since then, the city has encroached on the 180-acre site, bordered by US 95 on the north, Alta Drive on the south, and Valley View Boulevard on the west, about three miles west of downtown. Several years ago, when the state Department of Transportation wanted to take 14 acres of the site to widen US 95, it raised such an uproar that not only were the paving-paradise plans scrapped, but the springs site was preserved as one of the richest and most unique cultural and biological resources in southern Nevada.
In addition, the Nevada Legislature passed a bill to fund the preserve, in part, with fees from a special Big Springs license plate.
Today, the Las Vegas Springs Preserve visitor area is under construction. Scheduled to open in 2007, the preserve will include museums, gardens, trails, and restored structures. The Desert Living Center will be the first commercial building in Nevada to be built with straw bales for insulation. Trails will criss-cross cottonwood and mesquite growth, home to coyotes, kit foxes, and dozens of bird species.
To get a closer look at the plans for the preserve, you can go to www.springspreserve.org/html/. To get there, take Valley View Boulevard north past Charleston to Alta, then go left to 3701 W. Alta Drive.
