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This page last updated on 01/312018
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Wash Description: The city of Las Vegas sprawls across a wide bowl that is ringed with mountains on all sides. Often called, the Las Vegas Valley, it is drained by the Las Vegas Wash which eventually runs into Lake Mead. North of the city, Upper Las Vegas Wash is a series of aprons — bajadas — that fringe the rugged ranges of the Sheep Mountain Range. Though this part of the wash is normally dry, except during the monsoon season, it has been accumulating sediment for many centuries, leaving a sedimentary record of conditions and ecosystems covering millions of years. The Las Vegas bearpoppy, Merriam’s bearpoppy, and the Las Vegas buckwheat are three rare Mojave Desert plant species found in the Upper Las Vegas Wash.
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Paleontological History: Even in today's more dry conditions, the present stream is cutting an arroyo into the ancient sediments, exposing a remarkable fossil record from late Pleistocene times as old as about 200,000 years. This deep drainage, cut by thousands of years of run off and flooding, contains significant paleontological, botanical, and cultural resources such as extinct mammoth and ground sloth fossils. Herds of Ice Age Columbian mammoths – the largest of elephant species with tusks longer than six feet and molars the size of a human head – once roamed the lush and verdant wetlands of Las Vegas. In an area alternately known as the Upper Las Vegas Wash or Tule Springs their fossil remains (Fig. 02) have laid undisturbed for centuries.
Bill Gilcrease discovered the lower molar of a Colombian mammoth on a northeast corner of his land in the early 1960s. Scientists excavated the land in a 1962-63 dig and found teeth from Camelops, larger versions of today’s Bactrian camels, and American lions, weighing up to 1100 pounds, also made this area their home along with at least three species of ancient horse and massive sloths. These camels, horses and Colombian mammoths probably lived on the land during periods of drastic climate change and fell into and died in its spring mounds. Thousands of Pleistocene-era fossils have been found in Tule Springs, and thousands remain for scientific excavation, examination and public viewing. What makes this area unique is the vast span of time the fossils represent. Fossils and fossilized pollen in the area span nearly 250,000 years of time, offering important insight into at least two Ice Ages and multiple warming and cooling periods.
Since their original discovery, there has been a movement to distinguish the Upper Las Vegas Wash as a national monument and future home of the Ice Age Park of Southern Nevada, a proposed tourist destination, research facility and home to the thousands of fossils already discovered here now being stored at the San Bernardino County Museum in California. As recently as last year, a team from the San Bernardino County Museum has pulled more than 500 bones from a single spot - the highest concentration of fossils yet found in an area paleontologists have explored since the 1960s. On March 30, 2012, a notice published by the Environmental Protection Agency in the Federal Register announced the availability of the BLM’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) and issuing the Record of Decision that addresses boundary adjustments to the 5,000-acre Conservation Transfer Area, also known as the Upper Las Vegas Wash, in the northwest Las Vegas Valley. In June of this year, a bill was introduced in Congress that would set-aside 22,650 acres into what would be known as the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument.
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10/30/2012 Trip Notes: Though there are several dirt paths lead to the wash from the city's north edge toward the Las Vegas Range and its bajada, we entered the area from the power-line road off of Route 95N, just past the Kyle Canyon turnoff (refer to Fig. 03). The top picture, (Fig. 01) is the view we had across the bajadas that come down from the Sheep Mountains in the distance. The tallest mountain in the picture is Gass Peak. As we headed out towards the wash, we passed a series of arroyo bluffs (Fig. 04). Many of these arroyo walls are freshly exposed, revealing intricate layers of sediments. Thick gravel beds represent input from alluvial fans. As we hiked further out, these arroyo walls began to slump into much gentler slopes (Fig. 05) that hide any possible details of the sediments and fossils. Along the way we crossed several areas that provided evidence (Fig. 06) of flowing/standing water no more than a two to three weeks ago. After about a mile out, we came upon the corner of a wooden fence line that stretched at least a 1/2 mile in opposite directions. The view in (Fig. 07), taken from just inside this fenced area, is looking back toward our starting point with the Spring Mountain Range in the distance. Though we were unable to find the location of the 60’s paleontological dig or any fossil remains, we did come across the hollow shell and burrow (Fig. 08) of a long deceased desert tortoise that we estimated to be approximately 50 years old. Click here for more … Desert Tortoise (gopherus agassizii).
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