The vast majority of Vegas visitors who travel on Interstate 15 do so between Sin City and southern California, often in heavy traffic inbound on Friday and outbound on Sunday. The few who head northeast out of Las Vegas are going to Valley of Fire State Park or Mesquite, St. George, Utah, and points beyond.
Even fewer travelers go 23 or so miles and take the exit for US 93 northbound — but it’s one of the fastest ways to head into the near reaches of Greater Vegas.
US 93 is a major mostly two-lane national highway that runs from Wickenburg, Arizona, slightly northwest of Phoenix, all the way to Eureka, Montana, slightly northwest of Kalispell in the state’s northwestern corner, then continues into British Columbia as Highway 93 all the way to Banff.
In Nevada, it runs from Hoover Dam to Jackpot, a long straight isolated stretch of more than 500 miles. Though US 50 through central Nevada claims the designation of the “Loneliest Road in America,” US 93 makes it look like an L.A. freeway at rush hour.
You get the idea as soon as you turn off I-15 and drive 70 miles north on a ruler-straight road through the sparse dun desert … until the scenery goes all greenery and the walls close in on you. You wind through a small canyon till the hills open up again and you know you’ve reached an oasis: the 5,382-acre Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge. This is less than two hours from Las Vegas, but it might as well be the end of the world.
Springs bubble up from the aquifer I wrote about in the previous blog to form Upper and Lower Pahranagat lakes, with a marsh in between, that serve as a riparian habitat for thousands of migratory and predatory birds, deer and small mammals, reptiles, and a few rare fish.
Pahranagat is a stop on the Pacific Flyway, a major north-south avian migratory route, making the NWR a birdwatcher’s paradise; many species also breed and overwinter here. The 264 species recorded on the refuge represent more than half of all known birds in the whole state.
Entrance to Pahranagat is free. The Refuge features a visitor center (opened in 2015), nearly 10 miles of hiking trails from meadows and marshes to streams and desert, hunting and fishing in season, and camping (free year-round).
The little town of Alamo, three miles north, has a few travelers amenities. A few miles north is Ash Springs, where US 93 turns east to Lincoln County (which might be the subject of a future blog) and west on NV 375, also known as the Extraterrestrial Highway, which passes the infamous UFO town of Rachel (which definitely will be covered in an upcoming episode).
No more than 40,000 visitors pass through the Refuge annually, so if you ever make it up here, you’ll be among a select group of less than one-tenth of one percent of Las Vegas visitors to do so.
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