The New Ice Age Park
Las Vegas is preparing to take the world stage with a very prehistoric and unexpected cast of characters. Local and national supporters are rallying around the concept of protecting a gold mine of Ice Age fossils while creating a new kind of modern, urban national park just minutes from the Las Vegas Strip.
by Melynda Thorpe
In the north Las Vegas Valley and just a 30-minute drive from the Las Vegas Strip runs a sandy desert wash. Until now, the area has remained unprotected and open to recreation and misuse. It is hard to believe that this area was once a lush wetland inhabited by herds of roaming Ice Age animals including Columbian mammoth, American lion, sabre tooth cat and the fierce dire wolf.
On Friday, Dec. 12, 2014, the U.S. Senate approved a bill that will create the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument in the far northeastern side of Las Vegas valley — on the opposite side of I-15 from Nellis Air Force Base and Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The designation takes in more than 22,000 acres that includes tens of thousands of ice age fossils. Paleontologists estimate the site could contain hundreds of thousands of bones showing the past quarter million years of the earth’s history including pertinent information about the ice age era.
Now, the world-famous metropolitan community known for nightlife and entertainment is poised to take the world stage once again with a very prehistoric, unexpected cast of characters. To bring protection to the area dense with fossils and to provide due diligence to the history that can be found here, a powerful group of elected officials, community groups, scientists and national advocates are working to make a change that will alter the map of Las Vegas forever.
Brushing away the layers of history, Tule Springs tells the story of survival, extinction and evolution over a period of more than 200,000 years. Now with a world-destination urban community supporting it, and legislation in process, the proposed Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument could soon become one of most accessible and visited national park units in America.
According to Lynn Davis, senior manager of the National Parks Conservation Association Nevada Field Office, if legislation is passed, the Las Vegas Public Lands and Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument Act would transfer nearly 23,000 acres from the Bureau of Land Management to the National Park Service for protection and preservation of the fossil beds site. It would also set a model for a new kind of national park — a modern, urban, active research park where visitors can observe paleontologists uncovering Ice Age animal fossils as they are unearthed in the very location where herds once roamed.
According to scientific reports, thousands of Pleistocene-era fossils have been found at Tule Springs since they were first discovered in the 1900s. In the early 1960’s, the area became the site of a “Big Dig” excavation operation and was the first site in the world to use radio carbon dating system. At that time, a team of 30 scientists from New York, Nevada and California garnered large equipment for digging trenches and surveying the dense population of fossils. Records and fossils of the Big Dig are housed at Nevada State Museum and Nevada Natural History Museum in Las Vegas just miles from the site.
But when tents were packed and papers published, somehow Tule Springs Ice Age fossils were forgotten.
“When you go out to the site, you look across what appears to be flat desert,” Davis says. “Then, as you walk down into the wash you enter a rugged badlands area, and this is where it becomes truly magical.”
University of Nevada, Las Vegas Paleontologist Josh Bonde, Ph.D. says the layers of exposed hillside at Tule Springs are “dynamic, readable pages of history.” For Bonde, Tule Springs is an extension of the classroom and a living laboratory for his students.
“This is probably the greatest collection of Ice Age fossils in the world,” he says. “Students can come out here and have access to a world-class excavation site with fossils surfacing as the land continues to change with the wind weather. Every time we come out here we find something new.”
Davis has been working with supporters of Tule Springs since 2007 in what she calls “a heels to hiking boots kind of project.” In close proximity to Las Vegas city, residential neighborhoods, businesses, schools and Nellis Air Force Base, “The effort to preserve this land has required rallying broad community support from local officials, business leaders and community groups through presentations and meetings” she says. “But strapping on hiking boots and taking dignitaries into the fossil-dense landscape was how support was solidly cemented.”
Where it really started, according to Davis, was with a few individuals who formed a friends group, built up support, and came to NPCA and asked, “What do we have here?”
Leading the citizen effort is Jill DeStefano, president of Protectors of Tule Springs. “When we first started gathering support, we stood at the department of motor vehicles -weekends, in the heat, in cold — getting signatures on a petition to let our elected officials know that public wants this protected.”
Alan O’Neill, Founder Outside Las Vegas Foundation and retired National Park Service superintendent has also been instrumental in growing support for the project. “I’ve been involved in conservation and public lands management for 48 years,” he says. “This is the best example I’ve ever run across where you have such a community involvement and buy-in.”
For O’Neill, to see the business community, elected officials, scouts, military and native people come together in support has been something remarkable. “We’ve even incorporated the Las Vegas trail system to connect to Tule Springs. You can actually now pick up a trail on The Strip and ride to Tule Springs from downtown Las Vegas.”
With more than 40 million international tourists traveling to Las Vegas each year, “We hope to give them a reason to stay just a little bit longer,” O’Neill says. “Once you go out to the site you want to stay. It is really something special.”
For Bonde, there is a sense of urgency to bring protection to Tule Springs. “This is the greatest record of Ice Age ecosystems anywhere in the world,” he says. “People are so excited when they find out this is here — we want to make sure it can be preserved and protected it before irreparable damage is done.”
Legislation to designate Tule Springs a national monument has been endorsed by Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, the Nevada State legislature, Clark County Commission, the cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, the U.S. Air Force, educators, the tourism and resort industry, dozens of community groups and thousands of individuals. According to Davis, the legislation is co-sponsored by Nevada’s entire Congressional delegation, and is continuing to advance through the legislative process.
“This land deserves inclusion in the National Park System,” Davis says.
Watch the video now available: http://vimeo.com/114681765
