Las Vegas Mormon Fort (Nevada’s Oldest Building)

Las Vegas began here, with adobe and a creek. On June 14, 1855, thirty-two Mormon missionaries sent by Brigham Young arrived at the springs and built a hundred-and-fifty-foot adobe fort, planting crops and trying to convert the Southern Paiute. The mission lasted barely two years before dissension and a failed lead-mining venture emptied it. The walls outlived it: Octavius Gass made them his ranch headquarters, Helen Stewart expanded the holding, and in 1902 she sold the land to the railroad for the townsite, auctioned in 1905. A surviving wall is the oldest building in Nevada.

What the plaque says

Las Vegas had its beginning at this location on June 14, 1855, when thirty-two Mormon missionaries arrived from Utah under the leadership of William Bringhurst. They set to work establishing farm fields that summer, and began to build a 150-foot square adobe fort that September, enclosing eight two-story houses. They cultivated small gardens and fields, planted fruit and shade trees, and tried to convert the local Southern Paiutes. Most of the Mormons departed in 1857, and by 1865, Octavius Decatur Gass began developing the Las Vegas Rancho, using the adobe structures as headquarters. He farmed and raised beef cattle, supplying travellers and miners in the Potosi region. Helen J. Stewart, owner of the property from 1882 to 1902, expanded the ranch to 1,800 acres, which she sold to the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad for the Las Vegas townsite. The Company auctioned the land on May 15, 1905, starting the process of building the Las Vegas around you today.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Neon Museum — 0.5 mi
  The Neon Boneyard — where the Strip''s discarded signs are rescued and lit again
• Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park — 0.5 mi
  The 1855 adobe fort where Las Vegas began — a mile and a world away from the neon
• The Mob Museum — 0.7 mi
  Organized crime, told in the downtown courtroom that first exposed it
• Fremont Street — 0.9 mi
  Glitter Gulch — the neon canyon where Las Vegas actually began

More markers nearby

• Old Spanish Trail — steps away
• The Morelli House — 1.1 mi
• Original Home of “Pop” Squires (1865-1958) — 1.2 mi
• Kyle (Kiel) Ranch — 1.6 mi