The Old Spanish Trail: Connecting a Network of Paths
The following text is pulled from displays throughout the exhibit to highlight the key points of the Old
Spanish Trail in more depth:
The Old Spanish Trail: Connecting a Network of Paths
In the early 1800s, the Old Spanish Trail carved a link between New Mexico and California, one that supported a vital economic trade route. The trail symbolized more than a line on a map; it became a conduit for revolutionary change throughout the vast, arid expanse we call the American Southwest. Unlike other frontier trails, it did not owe allegiance to nationalism, for the trail was not solely Spanish, Mexican, or Indigenous.
The arrival of Europeans to the West irrevocably transformed the Indigenous population. The horse gave the Ute, Shoshone, and Plains Indians unprecedented mobility and greater political power. For better and worse, economic trade along the Old Spanish Trail brought Native people into regular contact with the non-Indian world.
Textbooks burst with stories about routes like the Santa Fe and Oregon trails, along with explorers such as Lewis and Clark, but this trail has earned its historic legacy as well. Filled with peril, its twisted paths managed to build not just businesses but also towns that grew into major cities. Along the way, it witnessed people whose daring deeds and futuristic visions shaped the America we know today.
Old Spanish Trail Routes
Between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Los Angeles, California, the Old Spanish Trail followed three distinct routes—the Armijo, Main, and North Branch, each of which converged and divided in present-day Las Vegas. During its years of documented historical use, the trail accommodated Native people, trappers, slavers, traders, and immigrants. While travelers favored the Main Route, other variants evolved as people sought reliable water sources, shorter distances, adequate forage, less difficult terrain, and safer passage.
Indigenous people had charted the way centuries earlier. In what is now California and Nevada, the trail followed ancient trade routes used by abalone and olive shell traders. In parts of Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado, it traced routes used by ancient Puebloans, who traded obsidian and turquoise.
The majority of the routes crossed Ute territorial land, whose people used it to seasonally migrate between the mountains and the deserts.
Between 1829 and 1848, the Old Spanish Trail remained a pack trail, unusable for wagons of settlers. A typical pack caravan required 50 to 200 men to coax the parade of heavily laden animals forward. A standard outbound cargo included sarapes (shawls), frazadas (blankets), colchas (quilts), and jergas (rugs). The number of mules and horses herded on return trips to New Mexico varied from 200 to more than 4,000 animals.
After the United States took control of the Southwest following the Mexican Cession of 1848, other routes to California emerged, a wagon route opened to southern California, and use of the Old Spanish Trail sharply declined.
Nuevo México: Spain’s Northern Frontier
Less than 50 years after the voyage of Columbus, the Spanish Crown actively pursued a policy that brought its colonial might to the North American continent. Scarcely a quarter of a century after the submission of the Aztec Empire, in Mexico, the Spanish Crown sanctioned the first entrada (expedition) into its far northern frontier. Fueled by the silver bonanza of 1549, mining towns such as Zacatecas (1546) and Parral (1631) became springboards for Spain’s relentless northward thrust. The arrival of Europeans in the Río Grande Valley in 1598 precipitated the transformation of Nuevo México’s Indigenous population.
Santa Fe
In 1776, the entire province of Nuevo México numbered fewer than 7,000 souls. That same year, frays Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante outfitted their tiny “corps of discovery” in advance of an 1,800-mile attempt to reach California. With 2,000 residents, Santa Fe was the acknowledged political and religious epicenter of the Spanish frontier. In contrast, neighboring villages held barely a few hundred impoverished farmers.
For a land with less than a foot of annual rainfall, subsistence farming was surprisingly productive. Verdant foothills provided ideal pastures for sheep and a few cattle. In addition to buffalo hides, piñon nuts, and copper (from Santa Rita del Cobre), the province’s main exports were sheep and woolen products—a hallmark of New Mexico’s colonial economy. But the crown’s restrictive trade laws and the monopolistic tendencies of Chihuahuan merchants hampered its ability to grow that market. These fiscal limitations for New Mexicans led to covert trade with Kiowa and Comanche people to the east, and Ute people to the north.
Expeditions Into Ute and Hopi Territories
Spanish interest in the Yuta (Ute) territory grew out of administrative concern with the persistent contraband trade. In 1765, New Mexico Governor Tomás Vélez Cachupín sanctioned the first official expeditions into the San Juan region. His goal: form an alliance with the Utes and secure the continuation of lucrative rade between northern New Mexico villages and their nomadic neighbors.
Juan María Antonio Rivera
In 1765, Juan María Antonio Rivera of Santa Fe led two forays deep into the Yuta homeland. Enabled by Ute guides and former Hispano trappers who had already explored the area, Rivera penetrated the Dolores River Valley in June and reached present-day Moab, Utah, in November. Rivera’s exploration furnished firsthand information about the Ute territory for future Spanish entradas.
Juan Bautista de Anza & Francisco Garcés
In 1775, Presidial Captain Juan Baptista de Anza and Fray Francisco Garcés, the custodian of San Javier del Bac, in Tucson, claimed the earliest success in reaching California by land. Soon after its founding in 1769, Alta (Upper) California was in a desperate struggle to survive. Supply by sea was inconsistent; by land, it was all but impossible. In 1775, Anza replied to the viceroy’s plea to save the beleaguered Californios. He and Garcés left southern Arizona via Yuma Indian country and reached the harbors of San Diego and Monterey. The next year, the two adventurers returned with a tattered contingent of 250 colonists and founded the Spanish colony of San Francisco.
Despite this initial feat, the trail posed too many hurdles to declare it an open passage from Santa Fe to San Gabriel Mission.
Francisco Garcés
Driven by a desire to missionize among the Moqui (Hopi) villages of today’s Arizona, Francisco Garcés forged a route from San Gabriel Mission across the Tehachapi Mountains and onward to Oraibi, arriving there on July 2, 1776. His unwelcome appearance on the heels of an earlier visit from Fray Escalante deepened Hopi anxiety. In a subsequent letter to Escalante, Garcés offered details of his route as well as warnings about the Hopi people’s open hostility. The news confirmed Escalante’s plans to reach Monterey on a parallel latitude well north of the Hopi territory.
Garcés received little hospitality from the Hopi, not even water or shelter. His account at Oraibi stated: “Before the sun rose, the Cacique (leader) proclaimed that they did not want anyone to become Christian, that he would punish anyone who went to the father.”
Dominguez and Escalante: Setting the Stage
On July 4, 1776, two determined Franciscan priests, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, readied a party of men and pack animals in the Santa Fe Plaza with the continued aim of establishing a stable overland link between New Mexico and Alta California.
Written in Stone
Near the “Crossing of the Fathers” and present-day Glen Canyon National Recreation Area is a recently rediscovered inscription, believed to have been carved on November 6, 1776. According to Escalante’s diary records:
“We were stopped for a long time by a heavy storm and a torrent of rain and large hail, with horrible thunder and lightning. We chanted the Litany of the Virgin in order that She might ask some relief for us.”
The inscription is an alcove where conceivably Dominguez and Escalante and their men could have gathered out of the violent weather.
The 1776 Dominguez and Escalante Expedition
The 12-man Dominguez and Escalante expedition included a cartographer, a skilled interpreter, and a handful of Spanish trappers. No doubt with Rivera’s 1765 report in hand, the cavalcade retraced his route into the San Juan River Valley. Along the way, they noted potential areas for settlement and ones capable of supporting missions. According to one historian’s interpretation of Escalante’s journal:
“On August 8, the party pass through the present-day site of Ignacio, Colorado, which they described as a ‘large meadow of good land for crops and facilities for irrigation.’ Later that day, they descended a stony slope, crossed the Río de las Animas, and camped for the night some four miles south of the site of the city of Durango.”
Herbert Bolton, Pageant in the Wilderness, 1950
The party crossed forested terrain south of the La Plata Mountains. At the Dolores River, the main party entered Utah south of the La Salle Mountains, while Escalante hired Ute guides to lead him to the Uncompahgre Plateau to the east. In September, the reunited expedition forded the Green River, skirted the Wasatch Mountains, and descended into the Utah Lake Valley near the present-day site of Provo. From there, they headed south, but after weeks of halfhearted attempts to press on in cold, snowy weather, the weary travelers cut short the expedition and headed back to New Mexico from a site north of present-day Cedar City, Utah. In a journal entry dated October 8, the friars reasoned:
“The weather was very unsettled, and we feared that long before we arrived the passes would be closed and we would be delayed for two or three months in the Sierra, where there might be no people, nor any means of obtaining necessary substance…”
The party backtracked, traversing northern Arizona and crossed the Colorado River near Glen Canyon at a place now recognized as the “Crossing of the Fathers.” They headed east to the Hopi village of Oraibi and returned to New Mexico. Their arduous, 1,800-mile journey ended in Santa Fe where it all began.
Despite its breakdown, the attempt gave Spanish administrators invaluable strategic information about the empire’s vast interior—details rendered in the subsequent Miera y Pacheco map (1778). But the hope to connect New Mexico and California with a reliable trail was never realized under Spanish authority.
The full establishment of the Old Spanish Trail would have to wait until 1829, although its earliest routes would continue to see a parade of traders, horse thieves, and slave traders.
Travel on the Old Spanish Trail
The annual pack-mule caravans left Santa Fe in the late fall. Depending on weather and trail conditions, caravans arrived in Los Angeles within three months. The traders would spend the winter in the Los Angeles area, negotiating the sale of trade goods and the purchase of mules and horses. By early spring, they rounded up their men and herds and would be back in Santa Fe within two months, eager to sell their newly acquired animals.
Desert temperatures favored travel in late fall and early spring. In addition, springs and water sources were generally more dependable and river crossings easier. Depending on the route, the most difficult river crossings were on the Green River just north of present-day Green River, Utah; the Colorado River at present-day Grand Junction and at present day Moab; the San Juan River at Caracas Canyon; and the Animas River at present-day Durango. The Animas River was possibly the most difficult crossing for the caravans due to the chilly water and rocky terrain.
The Ute People
The Ute people assert to be the longest continuous residents of what is today the Four Corners region—a place of soaring mountains, rushing rivers, and grassy plains with bounteous elk and deer herds. While it is not known exactly when they entered present-day Colorado, one tribal historian says that, according to their oral tradition, “The Utes were here from the beginning—at least 9,000 years before others came—when the creator put us here. We were born here.”
Another Ute scholar relates this origin story:
“In Ute traditional belief, water grandmother is mother earth and created this earth for her children to come. Sinawavi is her helpmate, created to become the steward of her body. He made trails from the mountain center of the earth to the edges where the earth meets the sea that surrounds it. … Only Sinawavi has the power to make the trails or measure the earth. No mere man can presume to make trails, to measure the earth, or to cut up her flesh. To do so would be the direst sacrilege.”
James A. Goss, “Ute Indian Perspective on the Old Spanish Trail,” Spanish Traces (Fall 2003)
Trade Takes Root
The Yutas (Utes) and the Spanish knew each other well, but Spanish law since 1598 had banned trade with the Utes and barred Hispano colonists from penetrating the northern region. This restriction, however, did not prevent the Utes from coming to the Spanish colonists to trade,
especially for horses, but also grains, flour, and knives. For their part, the Utes brought furs, dried meat, and young women and children—captives from other tribes.
In 1670, the Spanish and the Utes formalized a trading relationship with an agreement that maintained peace and assured the Utes unrestricted access to annual trade fairs in Taos, Abiquiú, and Santa Fe. In return, the Utes guaranteed safe passage to crown-sanctioned excursions into their ancestral homeland. This early form of frontier diplomacy resulted in exacting treaties with foreign interpreters and neighboring tribes, including the Jicarilla Apache.
After Rivera’s return in 1765 and the Dominguez and Escalante journey in 1776, New Mexicans turned a covetous eye toward the Utah territory. New Spanish bans on all trade outside of the province were imposed in 1778, but they only impeded the illicit trade. The threat of prison, plus the confiscation of trade goods, seemed worth the risk to many impoverished colonists who were indebted to wealthy landholders. Although clearly illegal, these unauthorized forays into Ute country provided strategic information that proved valuable to Spanish authorities.
Ute warriors Wakara (Walkara) and his brother Arrapeen were well-known traders in slaves on the Old Spanish Trail. They often raided Paiute and Mojave villages where they captured women and children. These captives were then traded to the caravans for horses. Many of the captives were used as domestic servants in Hispano communities in New Mexico and California.
Loosening Trade Restrictions
In 1821, Mexico declared its independence from Spain, and the U.S. Congress admitted Missouri into the Union. News about Mexican independence had scarcely spread when William Becknell and his band of Missourians arrived in the Santa Fe Plaza to trade household items and farm implements—the first traders to legally enter New Mexico from the east. During his brief stay, Becknell realized an 800 percent profit on his inventory. Laden with Mexican silver pesos, he departed for St. Louis with a promised return in the spring on what was soon called the Santa Fe Trail. After a few years, the American trade expanded south down the Camino Real to northern Mexico’s luxury-starved mining districts.
The ease of trade under Mexican authority, coupled with the economic boost wrought by the Santa Fe Trail and the Camino Real, stimulated renewed interest in a route to California. In the fall of 1829, New Mexico Governor José Antonio Chaves commissioned Antonio Armijo to lead a party west to the San Gabriel Mission. The son of a Santa Fe trader, José Francisco Armijo, Antonio had learned his father’s craft at an early age and accepted his charge with enthusiasm and self-assurance.
Life on the Old Spanish Trail: Campsites and Trail Food
Despite its rigors and dangers, life on the trail was undoubtedly an exciting venture for most. Guides studied the terrain as they sought known springs, watched for wildlife and other travelers, and bartered with bands of Indians. Many of their early caravans hired Ute or Navajo guides. As the years wore on, seasoned mountain men, including Dick Wootton, William Wolfskill, John Rowland, and Isaac Slover, embarked on “The Trail to California.”
Caravan leaders selected campsites that had reliable water and grass for livestock, cover from the wind, and protection from bands of Indians looking for unattended horses.
All caravans had a string of mules to haul the kitchen and camp supplies. Although the men hunted wild game, such as mule deer, antelope, rabbits, and ground squirrels, and collected native plants when available, they depended on the supplies they brought from Santa Fe and Los Angeles—massive amounts of dried apples and apricots, chile, beans, cornmeal, pemmican (jerk buffalo meat with berries), and other goods needed to feed 60 men for three months.
The caravans also traded with bands of Indians. Encounters with Ute, Paiute, and Shoshone were fairly common, and most of the bands expected the caravans to trade. As supplies ran low, the expeditions were not averse to eating their own livestock. As recounted in Antonio Armijo’s journal as they crossed the Mojave Desert in 1829:
“nos comimos un caballo. … nos comimus un macho de D. Miguel Valdes.”
(We ate a horse. … We ate a mule belonging to Miguel Valdes.)
Downtime on the Trail
Most of the men on the caravans were seasoned travelers, experienced horsemen, young men looking for an adventure, or from families familiar with trading on Mexico’s northern frontier. Others gained experience quickly.
Around a campfire, the men told stories, played cards, gambled, and made music. Most travelers carried only small, portable items they could roll into their blankets or tie onto their saddles. For those who could read, the items may have included letters from loved ones, trail maps, or a novena (devotional prayer). Some carried small religious artifacts, such as a rosary or a retablo. Others may have only a deck of cards, a pair of dice, a small musical instrument, or one of many gambling games common at the time.
Antonio Armijo Expedition: A Trail at Last
With 60 mounted men and a pack-mule caravan, Antonio Armijo set out on November 6, 1829, to connect the various segments of the trail into one commercial corridor. Leaving Abiquiú, he ventured nearly due west and entered the headwaters of Largo Canyon where he reached the San Juan River near present-day Blanco, New Mexico. Pressing on, Armijo passed present-day Aztec and skirted the southern edge of Mesa Verde before reaching the site of today’s Four Corners Monument.
With a Navajo guide to escort his party across northern Arizona, Armijo and his party traveled north up Tsegi Canyon past present-day Navajo National Monument before entering present-day Glen
Canyon National Recreation Area. His journal entry on December 6 mentions el Vado de los Padres (the Crossing of the Fathers), where his party walked in the footsteps of Dominguez and Escalante and forded the Colorado River. The group continued up Wahweap Canyon and crossed into Utah. Armijo stopped to take water at Agua de la Vieja, the natural, fresh-water pool at present-day Pipe Spring National Monument.
The caravan continued west, striking the Virgin River near St. George. Pausing only briefly for Christmas mass, Armijo and his men followed a trail that seasoned trapper Rafael Rivera recalled from an earlier excursion. Three weeks into the New Year, they arrived at the Mojave River. The following day, a contingent of Californios from San Bernardino rescued the starving sojourners and escorted them through Cajón Pass to the San Gabriel Mission. Armijo had arrived, 86 days after his departure from Abiquiú.
Once Armijo exchanged his woolen goods for additional horses and mules, he departed California on March 1, 1830. He returned along the same route and arrived “in the jurisdiction of Jemez,” New Mexico, on April 25—less than 60 days later.
Elated with the outcome, Governor José Antonio Chaves reported the news of the long-awaited trade link. Officials in Mexico City published the letter in the Registro Official del Gobierno de los Estados Unidos Mexicans on June 19, 1830.
The Old Spanish Trail Through Clark County
Spanish Trail travelers through Clark County followed changing routes as they learned of shortcuts and new sources of water, but the trail always intersected watering holes. Spanish Trail pioneer Antonio Armijo, and early fur trappers depended on the Virgin and Colorado rivers to take them safely to California. In 1829, when the Armijo expedition found the unfailing springs of Las Vegas Valley, caravan leaders opened a new path between the Virgin and Muddy rivers and Las Vegas Springs. Well-watered Red Rock Canyon became part of the route, although long, waterless stretches remained along the trail. The main trail crossed Clark County from Las Vegas Springs to Cottonwood Spring (Blue Diamond), Mountain Spring, Stump Spring, (Pahrump Valley), and on into California.
As the caravan entered the valley, they could see vegetation and grasslands as they neared the lush meadows and springs. The route they followed became known as the Old Spanish Trail. They dubbed the area where they rested and grazed their draft animals Las Vegas, meaning “the meadows” in Spanish and where you stand now.
Frémont and His Scouts
In 1843–1844 Captain John C. Frémont explored the West. He gave English names to both the Old Spanish Trail and the Great Basin—a vast region whose rivers drained inland, not to the sea. He first
trekked to Oregon, then south through California, then back eastward through the Mojave Desert to Utah and Colorado.
Three famous scouts guided the party: Thomas “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick, a trapper with deep knowledge of Plains tribes; Christopher “Kit” Carson, who knew the trails of the Southwest; and Alexis Godey, a mountain man and trapper familiar with the northern Rocky Mountains.
These guides did not know the Mojave Desert, but all could “read” the ground, find water and safe campsites, and were fearless in the face of danger.
In May 1844, Frémont followed the Spanish Trail down the Mojave River, north to the Amargosa River, and then east to Utah via Las Vegas Valley and the Virgin River. The map of Frémont’s route included Las Vegas Springs—the first time Las Vegas was named on any map.
Slave Trade
Most disturbing among the illicit trade along the trail was the exchange of human slaves. The Plains Indians had a long-standing tradition of trading slaves, especially women and children captured during raids of their enemies. After the arrival of Europeans and the introduction of the horse to Indigenous people, the practice gained a larger footprint. Horses gave people more mobility to hunt, raid, and relocate their camps. They became symbols of power and economic status, particularly for the Ute people. As they became a “mounted society,” warriors captured women and children to acquire the revered animal.
Spanish traders valued their Indian captives for use as herders and domestic servants. Their purchase, moreover, enabled Spaniards to baptize the Indians into the Catholic faith and rear them as citizens of the crown. As the trade increased, so did staged annual raids on the “horseless” Indian communities of the Great Basin—Paiute, Mojave, and Goshoot. In addition, the Utes captured women and children in warfare against the Apache, Comanche, and Navajo. The practice of trading human slaves continued well into the 19th century.
Horse Theft
The presence of thousands of horses and mules on mission-owned lands in California proved irresistible to horse thieves. The occurrences of animal theft in Alta California coincided with the closure of Franciscan missions in 1834 and the dispersal of lands and personal property to a handful of wealthy Mexican rancheros. Baptized Indians (neophytes) left the missions with large herds of horses and mules to exchange with New Mexicans on the trail for more useful items, such as woolen and household goods.
Realizing the potential for huge profits, some of the traders engaged Indigenous people to raid local ranches, steal large herds of animals, and take them to the San Joaquin Valley for exchange. The New Mexicans would drive the contraband to Santa Fe for sale to Americans and merchants. In 1833, the
frequency of these crimes was such that the governor of California sought to prohibit New Mexicans from entering the coastal province without a license to trade.
In 1837, an organized “ring” of horse thieves appeared. Among them were former French and American fur trappers, New Mexican traders, and Ute warriors under a bold leader named Wakara, “Hawk of the Mountains.” In one raid some 5,000 animals were stolen in an unsuccessful attempt to drive them across the Mojave Desert and into central Utah.
The arrival of the U.S. military in California in 1847, on the eve of the war with Mexico, brought an abrupt end to the “golden age” of horse theft on the Old Spanish Trail.
Southern Paiute
Southern Paiutes and other Numic-speaking people began moving into the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau around 1000 C.E. Prior to contact with Europeans, the Paiute homeland spanned more than 30 million acres of present-day southern California, southern Nevada, south-central Utah, and northern Arizona. Their lifestyle included moving frequently, according to the seasonal harvests and animal migration patterns, and they lived in independent groups of three to five households.
The Spanish settlement of the American Southwest brought disruption and violence to the Southern Paiute, including the introduction of slave trade to the Great Basin. Because the Paiute did not adopt the horse as a means of transportation, their communities were frequently raided for slaves by neighboring equestrian tribes, New Mexicans, and, eventually, Americans. Slave trafficking of Paiute people increased after the 1829 opening of the Old Spanish Trail. Demand was highest for children, especially girls.
San Gabríel Archangel
Two missions (San Diego and Monterey) separated by 650 miles of rugged coastline were hardly sufficient to serve the estimated 100,000 Native people living in California. As hunter-gatherers, they enjoyed abundant nutrition provided by the coastal environment. Before the arrival of the Europeans, they appeared exceptionally healthy. Having no natural immunity against common European diseases, such as measles and chickenpox, they were nearly wiped out within a few decades of European contact.
Once they gained a foothold, the Franciscans built 19 more missions. San Gabriel Mission (1771) anchored the southern cluster that ran parallel to the Pacific Coast from present-day San Diego to San Luis Obispo. Agriculture and ranching soon emerged as the economic mainstays of the Franciscan missions.
Vast herds of horses and mules, introduced to the region by the 1769 Serra-Portolá expedition, multiplied by the thousands. Larger, stronger, and more spirited than the animals commonly found in New Mexico, these mission-bred mules were highly cherished by the trade caravans that frequented California. The impressive numbers, moreover, translated into enormous profits for the visiting New Mexican merchants.
End of the Trail: Pueblo de Los Ángeles
Under the laws of Spanish colonization, the construction of missions preceded the founding of towns. Accordingly, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles became the civic extension of San Gabriel Archangel Mission, the third of 21 Franciscan missions built along the Pacific coastline between 1769 and 1824. Purposely sited between the presidio (military) towns of San Diego and Monterey, San Gabriel Mission gave rise in 1781 to the agricultural Pueblo of Los Angeles, located nine miles to the southwest.
Although a village of less than 400 inhabitants in 1800, Los Angeles was a prosperous Hispano community supported by commercial farming and ranching. One scholar wrote, “Los Angeles residents alone produced 4,600 bushels of grain as well as 12,500 head of cattle and 1,700 sheep.”
Conclusion
We have always been people on the move. Whether we’re seeking fortune or adventure, better climates or stunning views, we’ve hit the road on byways as rugged as the wagon trails and as nostalgic as Historic Route 66.
Following a half-century of stunted attempts, the Old Spanish Trail finally connected Santa Fe to California, enabling trade, settlement, and the growth of cities such as Los Angeles and, eventually, Las Vegas.
Popular culture never gave it the gleam that routes like the Santa Fe Trail enjoyed in movies, TV shows, and cowboy songs. But for those who lived near it or traveled along it, the Old Spanish Trail carried a profound impact.
Though threatened today by roads, cities, utility lines, and oil and gas drilling, remnants of it can still be explored. Listen closely enough, and you just might hear a faint echo of Spanish, French, English, and Native languages and feel, for a moment, the heartbeat of a different time.
The Springs Preserve
The Springs Preserve of Las Vegas has served as a waystation for Indigenous people, travelers, and early settlers for thousands of years. For many years, the tall cottonwoods along today’s US 95 offered the only indication of the deep history of the site. In 1972, archaeologist Claude Nelson Warren of UNLV was tasked with identifying the extent and depth of prehistoric and historic archaeological deposits on the site. This work to protect and preserve the Las Vegas Springs site would continue for more than 40 years. Claude and his wife, Elizabeth von Till Warren, committed themselves to preserving the site and created the Friends of Big Springs. Their research and advocacy with the national Old Spanish Trail Association and its Nevada chapter was instrumental to the site’s 1978 listing on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2007, the Springs Preserve opened, dedicated to protecting and preserving the birthplace of Las Vegas. Claude and his wife, Elizabeth von Till Warren, committed themselves to preserving the site and created the Friends of Big Springs. Their research and advocacy with the national Old Spanish Trail Association and its Nevada chapter was instrumental to the site’s 1978 listing on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2007, the Springs Preserve opened, dedicated to protecting and preserving the birthplace of Las Vegas.