Las Vegas hides a serious past behind the neon: artesian springs that watered Paiute camps and Spanish Trail caravans, a Mormon mission of 1855, a railroad auction in 1905, mob money in the 1940s, and atomic tests that lit the northern sky.
Built on the artesian springs that gave Las Vegas its name, this 180-acre preserve interprets 12,000 years of Mojave habitation, Southern Paiute basketry, flash-flood engineering and the springs that dried up in 1962. Open daily 09:00-16:00.
The state's archaeology collection: Tule Springs mammoth and ground-sloth bones dated past 11,000 years, Ancestral Puebloan pottery from the Lost City, Paiute rabbit-skin blankets and a Columbian mammoth skeleton. Thursday-Monday 10:00-17:00.
Agave roasting pits and red-and-white pictographs left by Southern Paiute and earlier Archaic peoples sit metres off the Lost Creek trail on the 13-mile scenic loop. Timed entry reservations required October through May.
Designated in 2014, these 22,650 acres preserve Ice Age wetland deposits where Columbian mammoths, dire wolves and American lions died between 100,000 and 12,500 years ago. Undeveloped, free, open dawn to dusk.
The oldest Euro-American building in Nevada: an adobe remnant of the 1855 Mormon mission sent by Brigham Young to convert Paiutes and guard the Salt Lake-to-Los Angeles trail. Reconstructed stockade and creek. Tue-Sat 09:00-16:00.
On 15 May 1905 the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad auctioned 1,200 lots here in two days, creating the townsite. The old Union Pacific depot stood where Plaza Hotel now sits — still the only US hotel with its own Amtrak-era platform.
A Smithsonian affiliate telling the story of 928 nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site from 1951, when Vegas hotels sold 'Dawn Bomb Parties' and mushroom clouds were visible from Fremont Street. Ground Zero Theater simulates a blast. Daily 10:00-17:00.
Housed in the 1933 federal courthouse where one of the 1950 Kefauver hearings actually sat, with the restored second-floor courtroom, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre wall and Prohibition speakeasy in the basement. Open daily 09:00-21:00.
The federal town built in 1931 to house 5,000 dam workers, still the only Nevada municipality where gambling is illegal. The museum in the 1933 Boulder Dam Hotel covers the 96 construction deaths and the Depression-era labour camps.
Behind the Flamingo's pool sits the garden plaque marking where Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel's rose garden and executive suite stood before his 1947 murder in Beverly Hills. The hotel opened 26 December 1946 and lost money for months.
Two acres of rescued signs: the 1950s Stardust script, the Moulin Rouge lettering from Nevada's first racially integrated casino of 1955, and the shell-shaped La Concha motel lobby of 1961 moved here as the visitor centre. Timed tickets.
The segregated neighbourhood where Black entertainers who headlined the Strip were forced to sleep until 1960. The Moulin Rouge opened here in May 1955, closed in six months, and hosted the 1960 desegregation agreement signing.