Driving west through Nevada at night, you come over a hill around milepost 95 on I-15 and Las Vegas shows up like gold dust in the bottom of a prospector’s pan.
It looks positively celestial.
If the Mormon pioneers had seen it, they’d have felt it was heaven’s streets of gold.
Of course, when the Mormon pioneers did clear that hill in 1855, they saw something that probably cheered them just as much. They saw lush meadows (“vegas,” in Spanish) running along a rambling river. And they said, “Here, in 'las vegas,' we will make our stand.”
Some 30 LDS missionaries, led by William Bringhurst, arrived first and went to work building the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort. It was the first structure in the region. Today, the residents of Las Vegas celebrate the structure each year on Settlement Day.
Photographer Ray Boren talked me into stopping there for a spell during a trip to California. And it was worth the detour.
The fort is a state treasure now, with a visitors center, tours and the like. But at heart, it is still just four 150-foot walls made of adobe with watchtowers in two of the corners. It stands on Las Vegas Boulevard, right up the street from where Donnie and Marie Osmond do their thing. And being inside the fort in the evening is like being in a bunker while the red glare of rockets lights up the skies.
The place is not easy to find. There’s no neon or fountains to catch your attention. The state has kept the area as a quiet refuge for those looking to dodge the hubbub of the town. In its heyday, of course, the fort was where the action was. There was a post office, a kitchen and a place to wash up.
Ah, living large in “las vegas.”
The fort lasted two years.
The pioneers for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who built the fort ran more risks than today's Vegas high rollers, but there was a payoff. The trade with travelers was brisk and profitable, which eventually led to rivalries and the demise of the place.
After that, the settlement would hibernate for half a century. Nobody bothered to stop and put down roots. Then the railroad rolled through in 1905, and the rest is glamorous, glittery history.
Today, 160 years later, the fort still feels like a safe haven in an unstable world. It’s not a shrine. It’s just an outpost. But for Ray and me, it was a sweet place to catch our breath, think long thoughts and savor some serenity before heading back onto Las Vegas Boulevard and the circus that's always playing there.
Email: jerjohn@deseretnews.com