Lost City Museum

State Museum Of The Ancestral Puebloan 'Lost City' (Pueblo Grande De Nevada), Built By The CCC In 1935 As The Site Was Flooded By Lake Mead · Overton, Nevada

The Lost City Museum in Overton, in the Moapa Valley about an hour north-east of Las Vegas, is a small Nevada state museum devoted to Pueblo Grande de Nevada, the so-called Lost City: a long string of Ancestral Puebloan villages along the Muddy and Virgin rivers, often described as the largest such site in Nevada. Archaeologists dug here in the 1920s and 1930s, and much of the site was then drowned by Lake Mead as the reservoir filled behind Hoover Dam. The museum was built in 1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corps in adobe, on part of the site, to hold what was rescued. Inside are pottery, baskets, stone tools, beads and displays on the people who farmed this valley for centuries; outside stand reconstructed pueblo dwellings. It is small - about an hour covers it - and mainly of regional interest, but it is a good, quiet stop on the way to Valley of Fire's east entrance, fifteen to twenty minutes away, and it tells a story the red rocks alone do not. The Moapa Band of Paiutes still live in the valley, and the displays deserve respect.

721 South Moapa Valley Boulevard, Overton, Nevada, 89040, United States

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern for a small Nevada state museum: open roughly 9 am to 4:30 pm on a limited number of days each week, often Thursday or Friday through Sunday or a similar short week, and closed on state holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. The outdoor pueblo keeps the same hours. The traps that ruin a day are driving an hour from Las Vegas on a closed weekday, arriving after about 3:30 pm when there is too little time to see it, and planning a summer afternoon here followed by Valley of Fire hiking in 110 F heat. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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