Springs Preserve

180 Acre Cultural And Natural History Site On The Original Las Vegas Springs; Includes Desert Botanical Gardens And The Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas · Las Vegas, Nevada

Springs Preserve is a 180-acre cultural and natural history site on the spot where Las Vegas began. For thousands of years artesian springs here fed a green meadow in the Mojave Desert; Southern Paiute people camped beside them, travellers on the Old Spanish Trail named the valley Las Vegas, the meadows, and the railroad town founded in 1905 drew its water from them until pumping dried the springs by the early 1960s. The Las Vegas Valley Water District now runs the site, opened to the public in 2007, as a campus of desert gardens, museums and trails. The botanical garden shows cactus, agave, Mojave natives and water-smart home landscaping; the Origen Museum explains the desert, water and the valley's past, with live animals; and the Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas, on the same grounds, covers a Columbian mammoth, Nevada's ichthyosaur, mining, the railroad and atomic testing. It is a local attraction rather than a destination, but it is the best place in the city to learn why Las Vegas exists at all, and a calm, shaded morning away from the casinos, ten minutes from the Strip.

333 South Valley View Boulevard, Las Vegas, Nevada, 89107, United States

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the preserve opens from about 9 or 10 am to about 5 or 6 pm, with the last admission an hour or so before closing, and it has kept shorter or reduced hours on some weekdays and closed on major holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Nevada State Museum on the grounds keeps its own hours and has closed some days of the week. The traps that ruin a day are arriving at midday in summer to open trails in 110 F heat, planning around the mammoth on a day the state museum is closed, missing the last admission, and turning up on an event day when parts are closed for set-up. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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