The fort new vegas
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Sources indicate the compounding of several factors, including poor crop production and a failed lead-mining effort. Two years after their arrival, the missionaries returned to Utah. The Mormons' presence in the area, however, was short. Family members arrived later, and a school for both Mormon and native children was organized, according to the Church News. Irrigated water from the nearby creek was used for crops and orchards. In addition to the protective fort, the settlers built cabins and established a post office. According to a 1949 Church News article, "the Mormon gospel was preached with typical zeal," resulting in several converts. The following day, they commenced building a fort.Īn article from the 1969 Church News described the settlers' purpose as a "two-fold mission." They were to establish a "halfway" station on the Utah-California trail and serve as missionaries to the American Indians in the area. On June 17, 1855, a group of 30 Mormon missionaries, led by William Bringhurst and sent under the direction of President Brigham Young, stopped four miles east of the Las Vegas springs and held church services. "Especially in a town that's blowing things up every few years," he said.
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Today, the Old Mormon Fort is billed as "the place where Las Vegas began." Macek finds it incongruous that a piece of the first building in Las Vegas remains intact. The storage building is still standing, and though most of it has been refurbished, a section of adobe dating back to 1855 is enclosed within the western wall - bricks used by Mormon settlers to construct the first nonnative settlement in the Las Vegas valley. Gass acquired property along the Las Vegas Creek and constructed both a house and storage building using the foundation and walls of an abandoned fort. Inside a bland, rectangular building on the dusty grounds of the Old Mormon Fort, visitors will find a historical treasure - and a Las Vegas anomaly.Īround 1865, a rancher named O.D. The Old Mormon Fort has endured the churning change of a dynamic city and is representative of the LDS presence in a valley home to approximately 100,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Īnd to this day, the story is remarkably preserved in a block of 19th-century bricks. The visual history of this city's origins - and the role played by Latter-day Saints - has been incrementally restored over the past six decades and is now protected within the quiet walls of a state historic park. "This is considered by many to be the first beginnings of the city of Las Vegas," said Chris Macek, park supervisor at the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort. LAS VEGAS - "Sin City" is built on casinos and carousing, but Las Vegas was born of adobe and Mormons. Gass, stands next to Old Mormon Fort.Īn old adobe storage building was once all that was left of the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort. The inside of a ranch building, which was built by O.D. Mormons arrived here in 1855 and built the first nonnative settlement. The Old Mormon Fort is considered to be the birthplace of Las Vegas. The adobe walls and mesquite ramada of the Old Mormon Fort have been rebuilt by the Nevada Division of State Parks.