Beneath the Springs Preserve, where you are now, lie the original Las Vegas Springs, the underground water source that made this valley habitable for humans for at least 10,000 years. The Southern Paiute people knew these springs as a reliable water source along what would become the Old Spanish Trail, and they maintained continuous presence in this valley long before the Spanish explorers arrived in the eighteenth century and long before the railroad auction of 1905.
The springs were fed by an underground aquifer connected to the Spring Mountains to the west, and they produced enough water to support the small cottonwood grove that gave the valley its name — Las Vegas, the meadows. When John C. Frémont visited in 1844, he noted the springs in his journal as one of the most reliable water sources on the route west. When Las Vegas was founded, the springs were its only natural asset.
By 1962, the springs were dry. Decades of groundwater pumping by a growing city had depleted the aquifer faster than it could recharge. The meadows that Frémont had admired vanished. The Springs Preserve now occupies the site as a natural and cultural history museum, its wetland habitats artificially maintained by treated wastewater, its exhibits telling the story of how a desert city consumed its own foundation. It is the most honest story Las Vegas tells about itself.