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This page last updated on 03/26/201
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| (Fig. 01) Kirt's Grotto Area |
Directions: From Las Vegas, drive north on Interstate-15 for about 70 miles to Exit 112 (Highway 170 to Bunkerville). This exit is about 5 miles south of (before) Mesquite. Travel on 170 (West Riverside Road) approximately 2 miles to New Gold Butte Road, also known as the official Gold Butte Backcountry Byway) on the right. There is a large parking area on the left. New Gold Butte Road follows southwest along the Virgin River before turning southeast away from the river. The northern boundary of the National Monument (Fig. 02) starts approximately ten miles in on this road. As you can see on the map below, the eastern and southern boundary of the Monument is bordered by the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and the western boundary is bordered by the state of Arizona.
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| (Fig. 02) Map of Gold Butte National Monument |
Gold Butte National Monument Background: On December 28, 2016, President Obama designated Gold Butte as a National Monument. Gold Butte, This area is home to countless cultural, historic, and natural wonders that make this area so unique and are now preserved for future generations. For decades, many Nevadans have been working to protect the nationally significant cultural, historic, and natural treasures in Gold Butte. The new Gold Butte National Monument, filled with brightly hued sandstone, covers nearly 300,000 acres of remote and rugged desert landscape in southeastern Nevada, and provides a stunning canvas for the area’s famously chiseled red sandstone rock art, and the desert provides critical habitat, twisting canyons, and tree-clad mountains that punctuate desolate stretches of the Mojave Desert. Permanent protection of the National Monument will provide greater protection to numerous wildlife species, including desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep, the banded Gila monster, great horned owls and a great variety of reptiles, birds and mammals. It will also safeguard Gold Butte's abundant archaeological resources, including rock art, caves, agave roasting pits and camping sites dating back at least 3,000 years.
Gold Butte National Monument Description: Created on December 28th, 2016, Gold Butte National Monument contains nearly 300,000 acres of unspoiled Mojave Desert landscapes on the north side of Lake Mead, creating a continuous corridor of protected land that extends eastwards from the NRA across to Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in Arizona, and onwards to Grand Canyon National Park (Fig. 02). The monument is approximately rectangular, 30 by 15 miles in size, encompassing, in its northern reaches, the southern end of the Virgin Mountains, which rise up to 7,946 feet (Virgin Peak), but the rest of the land is much lower in elevation, a mix of small hills and ridges, and wide desert plains sloping westwards to the lake and eastwards towards the Colorado River. The majority of the exposed rocks are relatively dull in appearance, limestone and granite, in places partly metamorphosed, but in some places the brightly colored Aztec sandstone is exposed. The outcrops are mostly bright red while some have shades of pink and yellow, and they form a variety of eroded formations. The sandstone is also notable for the many petroglyph panels which were etched onto the smooth cliffs and boulders by the Paiute peoples, up to 3,000 years ago, and it is the rock art, plus other associated ancient sites, that was one of the main factors in the national monument designation.
Description and Brief History of Gold Butte Region: Gold Butte Backcountry Byway is a 62-mile scenic drive that starts at exit 112 on the I-15, just south of Mesquite, Nevada, and heads south into a wild and rugged area known as the Gold Butte Region. The Gold Butte Region is administered by the BLM and the U.S. National Park Service. The byway is divided into four sections: (1) Gold Butte Road (rough paved road), (2) unpaved Gold Butte Road (rough graded road), (3) Red Bluff Spring Road (sometimes graded), and (4) Mud Wash Road (two-track in a sand and gravel wash). Refer to the map below (Fig. 03). Each of these scenic roads provides grand scenery as they pass through some of the most vast, wild and remote pristine desert wilderness found anywhere in Nevada. The geology of this sandstone-limestone-granitic-metamorphic faulted-twisted-contorted-eroded land, while nearly impossible to comprehend in total, is stunningly stark and beautiful. Three major ecosystems (Mojave Desert, Great Basin Desert, and the Colorado Plateau) meet here, providing for a varied and diverse flora and fauna. The Virgin River (Fig. 04) is seen peacefully flowing alongside the first several miles of the byway as it follows many low valleys that stretch down to the edges of Lake Mead’s Overton Arm. Its eastern boundary boarders Arizona and is dominated by Virgin Peak, towering 8,000 feet above the desert floor. Pretty much everything worth exploring on Gold Butte can begin at the Whitney Pockets (junction). For one thing, it's at the end of the pavement! For another, roads go in all directions. Lastly, it makes a great base for a picnic or overnight camping. Driving the entire byway requires a 4WD, if only for insurance on Mud Wash Road, and will provide lots of history, some unique geology, and will take more than a full day.
Gold Butte is 360,000 acres of desolate, rugged mountains, Joshua tree and Mojave yucca forests, outcroppings of sandstone, and braided washes that turn into slot canyons. The area of Gold Butte is named for the historic mining town and tent city of 1,000 miners in the early 1900’s. Driving to the end of the unpaved Gold Butte Road, you end up at the remains of the historic mining town of Gold Butte. This town was established in 1908 to service the many mining operations in the area. The town once boasted of a store, hotel, stable, and post office. Long abandoned, the ghost town of Gold Butte provides glimpses of early pioneer history, ranching and mining. Other areas of Gold Butte contain dozens of examples of Native American cultures rich in history. Petroglyph carvings etched into the rocks indicates that three separate Native American cultures once settled here. Mormon colonizers settled in the Mesquite and Bunkerville area in 1877.
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| (Fig. 03) |
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| (Fig.04) Virgin River |
 LOG of VISITS to GOLD BUTTE 03/14/2018 Trip Notes: Today, Harvey Smith, Bob Croke, Jim Herring and I returned to Gold Butte with the goal of showing Devil's Throat, Mud Wash Petroglyphs, Kirt's Grotto and Little Findland to Bob and Jim of whom neither had ever been too. Here is the post I mad for today's visit ... Visit to Gold Butte - Trip Notes for 03/14/2018. 04/25/2017 Trip Notes: Today, Harvey, Bob Croke, Jim Herring and I again returned to Gold Butte to for Jim and I to check on our assigned sites as stewards of the NSSP. While on this visit we went to the CC Dam at Whitney Pocket, the Black Butte Dam and the 21 Goats petroglyphs. Scroll down and use the provided links to visit these sites. 11/18/2016 Trip Notes: Today, Jim Herring and I returned to Gold Butte to make more detailed reports on the three sites we had been assigned as stewards. Scroll down and use the provided links to visit these sites. 11/13/2016 Trip Notes: Jim Herring and I met with Michele Betty, Tom Cluff and Betty Conway, Gold Butte regional site coordinators for the Nevada Site Stewardship Program. During this visit they took us to and assigned us three sites to monitor as stewards for the NSSP. 10/22/2015 Trip Notes:Today I made another visit to the Falling Man Rock art site and the dam at Whitney Pocket with the rock-hounds from the Henderson Senior Center. On this visit we had a rear tire "blowout" that delayed out return home by nearly two hours. Scroll down to the appropriate links below for pictures and information on these two hiking locations. 06/10/2015 Trip Notes: Today Harvey Smith and I attempted to locate Kirk's Grotto and Little Finland. Scroll down this page to the sections titled Little Finland and Kirk's Grotto and click the links found there to see pictures and get a description of visits to these two locations. 03/05/2015 Trip Notes: The objective of today's trip was to re-visit the "Falling Man" petroglyph site. Scroll down this page to the section titled Falling Man Rock Art Site and click the link found there to see pictures and get a description of today's hike. 01/09/2015 Trip Notes: Today Harvey Smith and I drove all the way down to the ghost town of Gold Butte. This journey included brief stops at Whitney Pockets and Devil's Throat along the way. Though there isn't much left to see at the Gold Butte town site, hiking the area and visiting some of its old mines certainly provided an idea of what it must have been like to work and live here more than 100 years ago. Page down and click the provided links to the above mentioned places for pictures and more information. Even though this was our third visit to the Gold Butte Region, it only made us realize that there is still much more to see and explore here. 09/30/2014 Trip Notes: Since our first visit here, I have been looking forward to this return visit for some time now. Research of the area since my last visit has indicated that Gold Butte is one of the richest petroglyph sites in the state of Nevada. Today Harvey and I attempted to locate the Khota Circus Petroglyph site and the 21-Goats site. Check below for links to pictures and descriptions on each of these sites. Unfortunately, there is so much to see here, we ran out of time before finding Kirts Grotto, Babe's Butte, or the Lollipops Petroglyphs. |
| 02/05/2014 Trip Notes: After leaving the highway and crossing the Virgin River, you end up turning right onto a narrower, undulating, un-signposted road (the Gold Butte Byway) that passes by several farms (Fig. 03), irrigated fields and orchards (Fig. 04) run along the river, which flows through quite a wide valley. It is then about 15 miles until you reach the area known as Whitney Pockets. This was our first time visiting this area, and even with detailed maps, we took a wrong turn that cost us nearly an hour of travel time. As most of the roads here are unmarked, driving around without maps of the area is suicide. From my study of the area, there are what I consider several sites of interest that are definitely worth exploring. They are: Falling Man Site, Black Butte Dam, Whitney Pockets, Little Finland, Devils Throat, and the Gold Butte Town Site. On today’s visit we only had time to visit three of these locations, and even then, time limitations kept us from exploring some of them in the manner to which we would have liked. NOTE: In order to keep this page down to a manageable size, where applicable, I have provided links to separate pages with pictures and detailed descriptions. |
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GOLD BUTTE Sites Visited by Title  |
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Lollipops Petroglyphs: "Lollipops" is the name for a set of petroglyphs that look like, well, Lollipops – a circle with a line drawn out of it. These are difficult to locate, however, There are some other quite unique petroglyphs on the cliffs; a 0.6 mile hike along a sandy trail from the trailhead. To get to the trailhead, run about 0.5 mile up the trail from Mud Wash to the BLM post and cable barricade. The hike to the glyphs is through sand, sometimes fairly deep, but is otherwise quite flat and along the base of some nice, deep red cliffs.
