Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument
National Monument · North Las Vegas, Nevada
Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument protects about 22,650 acres of the Upper Las Vegas Wash on the northern edge of the Las Vegas valley, bordered by the homes of North Las Vegas and Las Vegas. Designated in 2014 and run by the National Park Service, it holds one of the richest records of Ice Age life in the Southwest: bones of Columbian mammoths, ancient bison, American lions, camels, horses, ground sloths and dire wolves buried in the pale badlands of an old spring-fed wetland. Scientists dug here in the 1962-63 Big Dig, and its bulldozer trenches are still visible. The unit is young and has little or no visitor infrastructure: no staffed visitor centre on site as far as is known, a few trailheads and informal paths, no water and no shade. Most visitors will find a desert wash with low eroded bluffs, because the fossils are in the ground, not on display. Collecting them is a federal crime. For bones you can see, go to the Nevada State Museum at the Springs Preserve or the neighbouring state park.
North Aliante Parkway, North Las Vegas, Nevada, 89084, United States
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the monument is open land with no gate or fee station and is generally accessible from about sunrise to sunset, with no staffed visitor centre on site as far as is known; ranger programmes run only on scheduled days. Ice Age Fossils State Park and Floyd Lamb Park keep their own daytime hours and may close one or more days a week. The traps that ruin a day are going to the monument expecting a museum, arriving after 9 am in summer into dangerous heat, parking at a random edge with no trailhead, entering the wash when storms threaten, and assuming the neighbouring parks' hours apply. Confirm current times before relying on them.
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