Tule Springs

Ice Age Nevada is buried in this wash. When quarry workers turned up the bones of a Columbian mammoth at Tule Springs in 1933, they opened a window onto a wetter world, when the Las Vegas Valley was grassland roamed by giants. The fossil beds here hold the remains of mammoths, ground sloths, dire wolves, sabertooth cats, American lions, and camels, ranging from seven thousand to a quarter-million years old. After a long local campaign, the ground became Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument in 2014—one of the few national monuments inside a major city's edge.

What the plaque says

Tule Springs is one of the few sites in the U.S. where evidence suggest the presence of man before 11,000 B.C. Scientific evidence shows this area, once covered with sagebrush and bordered with yellow-pine forests, had many springs. These springs were centers of activity for both big game animals and human predators. Evidence found at these fossil springs shows the presence, 14,000 to 11,000 years ago, of several extinct animals; the ground sloth, mammoth, prehistoric horse and American camel. The first Nevada record of the extinct giant condor comes from Tule Springs. Early man, perhaps living in the valley as early as 13,000 years ago, and definitely present 11,000 years ago, was a hunter of the big game. Small populations of desert culture people, about 7,000 years ago to the historic period, depended upon vegetable foods and small game for subsistence. Late Pleistocene geological stratigraphy in few other areas is as complete and well known. State Historical Marker No.86 Nevada State Park System Southern Nevada Historical Society.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Neon Museum — 12 mi
  The Neon Boneyard — where the Strip''s discarded signs are rescued and lit again
• Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park — 12 mi
  The 1855 adobe fort where Las Vegas began — a mile and a world away from the neon
• The Mob Museum — 13 mi
  Organized crime, told in the downtown courtroom that first exposed it
• Fremont Street — 13 mi
  Glitter Gulch — the neon canyon where Las Vegas actually began

More markers nearby

• Kyle (Kiel) Ranch — 11 mi
• Las Vegas (The Meadows) — 11 mi
• Old Spanish Trail — 12 mi
• Las Vegas Mormon Fort (Nevada’s Oldest Building) — 12 mi