To imagine southern Nevada without Las Vegas would be like envisioning the ocean without all that water. A cruise ship on a sea of sand, the city is the commercial, cultural, and tourism center for the entire region, drawing some 41 million visitors a year — nearly twice the population of America’s 10 biggest cities combined.
Still, for the more adventurous traveler, the brilliance of the Vegas Strip can’t dim the allure of the area’s lesser-known natural and human-made wonders — all within hours of the city.
One recent week, I landed at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid International Airport, climbed into a rental car, and headed straight into the surrounding mountains and desert to experience Nevada as if Vegas weren’t there.
Day 1: Gold Butte National Monument
1 hour, 44 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip
Two thoughts occupy my mind as I roll through Gold Butte, one of America’s newest national monuments, just before sunrise: 1) The slowly illuminating landscape, an expanse of rolling, red-shaded mountains, and undulating desert look like a scene from Dune…and 2) Am I still on the road? Because I really can’t quite make out where the unpaved roadway ends and the surrounding 300,000-plus acres of Mojave Desert begin.
I am momentarily startled by what, silhouetted against the dim background, appears to be a large man waving his arms. Then I relax: It’s just a Joshua tree, one of a centuries-old army of them, marching across the desert floor.
I am heading for a place called, strangely, Little Finland — famous for its fantasy of delicately wind-carved red rock formations — and hoping I will be able to spot the turnoff. For as rugged as the road I’m now driving is, the final 10 miles or so to Little Finland require me to negotiate a seasonally dry creek bed, or wash.
In the morning’s half-light, I spot the sign. “Little Finland,” it says, and it points to the gully below.
City guys like me laugh at the urban 4×4 drivers around us, knowing those guys’ worst nightmare is getting their vehicles dirty, let alone dinged by flying rocks. But here and now, I’m thankful for every inch between the untamed ground and the underside of my rented SUV.
There are tire marks on the route ahead of me, so navigating the desert isn’t difficult at all. They say that even on a busy day, only a dozen or so vehicles will venture this way, which is at once a good thing and a shame. A steady stream of visitors would no doubt degrade the area’s delicate landscape; but then again, those who don’t come to this place miss out on the fantasia of curling, jagged, smooth and sharp natural rock sculptures that await around every dusty turn; the dazzling mineral mountains that seems to erupt from otherwise flat plains; the ghostly petroglyphs — paintings of people, animals, and fantastic beasts of long-lost legends — that turn some cliffsides into 12,000-year-old art galleries.
Yesterday, I visited the Friends of Gold Butte visitors center in Mesquite, 40 miles north of here. There, the group’s executive director, Brenda Slocumb, gave me admirably specific directions for getting to Little Finland, including where to park: alongside a small pair of old corrals made from railroad ties.
I pull the SUV to the side of the wash, climb out, and follow a barely-there trail up a hill, down a small canyon wall — and into a palm tree-shaded chasm, its orange-red walls seemingly carved into wildly improvised designs by a madman with a rock-cutting Sawzall: Above me lurks what I’d swear is a long, fire-breathing dragon; my eye picks out dozens of human forms, their empty eyes gazing down at me like gargoyles from a cathedral ledge; rising from its shadowy lair, silhouetted against the blue sky, a 20-foot-high red stone cat stretches into the emerging sunlight; stepping back from the baroque cliffside, toward the wide field of fine red sand at its base, I nearly trip over what could only be a fossilized baby manatee.
Most spectacularly, here and there the rim of the chasm seems to explode with petrified fireworks: finely twisted needlepoints of red rock, wildly splaying in random directions; defiantly long, impossibly thin. These utterly unlikely natural rock shapes are known as fins, and they give Little Finland its unusual, yet absolutely appropriate, name.
Yesterday, I’d asked Brenda Slocumb if I’d see any animals on my visit to Gold Butte. She predicted I’d be watched from afar by bighorn sheep and coyotes and rabbits and lizards; and possibly some scorpions, rattlesnakes, and desert tortoises. But chances are, she said, I wouldn’t see any animals at all.
“Sit perfectly still,” she advised. “Just be quiet and patient. If you wait long enough, maybe they’ll come to you.”
Since I haven’t seen any animals of any kind, I decide to take Slocumb’s advice. I find a smooth red rock, set myself down, and wait. The quiet of the desert is profound; I can hear my heart beating. A breeze so slight I can’t even feel it is gently rustling the prickly white desert holly that dots the land.
Then, I hear it: The sound of feet crunching across the rocky patch behind me, like someone walking atop a pile of broken kitchen floor tiles. Slowly, I turn in its direction, and find myself staring into the soulful eyes of a grazing steer, his head and long horns tilted curiously. When Gold Butte was made a national monument in 2016, cattle ranchers using the land were allowed to keep their permits. Still, we are both visitors, he and I.
I stand up, offer my good-byes, and head back for the SUV. I retrace my route back through the wash, onto the unpaved road, and back toward civilization.
Day 2: Rogers Spring and Beyond
1 hour 15 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip
There’s plenty of water in the desert if you know where to look, and one of the best spots in the arid land north of Vegas is Rogers Spring, where water pours from a rocky, low mountainside at a steady 400 gallons per minute, then spills downhill into Lake Mead, 2 ½ miles away.
Driving along Northshore Road in Lake Mead National Recreation Area, the palm trees that stand aside the oasis are visible from a mile or so away. There’s a small parking lot and a shaded picnic gazebo.
Ironically, while the spring is completely natural, nearly nothing else around it is: Those palm trees are someone’s long-ago idea of a tropical touch; the fish that glide back and forth in the spring’s narrow pool (which itself exists only because someone built an earthen dam) are all imports, dunked here by visitors who for some reason wanted to be rid of them.
Still, there is nothing quite as mind-clearing as a half hour on a desert hillside with only the gurgling of a spring and the occasional screech of a drifting hawk. Don’t even think of taking a swim in those warm, clear waters, though: As an interpretive sign starkly warns, the spring contains a one-celled amoeba that likes to float up your nose and kill you.
Downhill from Rogers Spring lie the blue waters of Lake Mead, formed in the 1930s by nearby Hoover Dam. As the lake rose and engulfed ancient human settlements, historians and archaeologists scrambled to preserve as many Native American artifacts as they could. Many of those items ended up in the Lost City Museum, located Overton, about 15 miles north of Rogers Spring.
The low adobe building was constructed in the 1930s by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), who also created a replica “pit house,” an underground, fallout shelter-like dwelling that was common in these parts 1,400 years ago. There’s also a reconstructed Anasazi Pueblo house and, inside a museum extension, an actual preserved archeological site.
For those interested in even more distant history, the museum also preserves a mammoth tusk and the lower jaw of a camelops, the type of camel that roamed the American West until about 12,000 years ago.
Any trip that traces the shore of Lake Mead might as well include a drop-in on the modern wonder that created it: Hoover Dam. They’ve been conducting tours here since the year the dam opened, but while general dam tour tickets are available day-of and on-site only, you can pre-purchase guided power plant tour tickets in advance online.
A few miles away, Boulder City — built to house dam construction workers — is a time capsule of 1930s city planning, with its broad streets and Spanish Colonial architecture. At night, the vintage motels along Nevada Way flash neon signs straight out of the 1950s.
Boulder City’s triangular historic district is an outdoor art gallery: You’ll find more than 65 murals and sculptures, including a bronze bust of Frank T. Crow, “The Old Man” who ran both the construction of the dam and Boulder City with ruthless efficiency (name the last major federal project you know that wrapped up two years early).
There are at least two reasons to stop in at the Boulder Dam Hotel, an establishment as old as the city itself: It’s home to the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum — a marvelously efficient and entertaining primer on all things Boulder/Hoover — and Restaurant 1933, where guests should be required by law to sample Nana’s World Class Coffee Cake (two layers of moist cake, two layers of cinnamon swirl, and a brown sugar crumble topping crowned with about a quarter-stick of melted butter).
Day 3: The 18b Las Vegas Arts District
10 Minutes from the Las Vegas Strip
You can find a week’s worth of natural getaways outside of Las Vegas — from the red rocks of Valley of Fire State Park to the alpine fresh air (and frequent snows) of Mount Charleston.
For my last day of Alternative Vegas Visitation, though, I’m staying much closer to town — in a one-time no-man’s land between the Strip and Fremont Street — to soak in the unexpected colony of artists and craftspeople who occupy an 18-block area known as the 18b Las Vegas Arts District.
I start out with breakfast at The Pepper Club, a with-it restaurant run by chef Todd English. The menu is decidedly grown-up (as is the sexy wallpaper design — if you have kids and don’t want any embarrassing questions, you might want to seat them at the center of the restaurant). Try the Aloha Breakfast: eggs, steamed rice topped with furikake, and the best Spam you’ve ever had. Trust me on this.
My first stop is at the Arts Factory, a former office supplies warehouse that is now the district’s arts hub, home to 30 galleries showcasing the work of hundreds of artists. The floors creak appealingly as I move from door to door, glimpsing styles ranging from sprightly to seriously deranged.
It’s still morning, and since artists keep their own schedules, I find only a few galleries open. Happily, one of them is Julie Notaro’s Fraiche Arts Studio, on the second floor. Much of Notaro’s work is what’s called encaustic painting, with bees’ wax as the medium (“You don’t want to leave it out in the sun,” she says). I tell her I’m drawn by the brightness of her work, and she appreciates that.
“A lot of my work is kind of influenced by the local desert,” she says. “It’s funny, I grew up in Los Angeles, and I didn’t know Las Vegas had a beautiful desert until I moved here. I’m not even sure the people who live here pay much attention to how beautiful it is.”
I mention my surprise at finding a thriving arts community a stone’s throw from the casinos, and Notaro insists it makes perfect sense.
“Just think about all the creative people who come to Las Vegas,” she says. “The dancers, the set decorators, the designers. They all need a creative outlet, and they also need to be in kind of a bohemian environment.
“Walk around here awhile, and you’ll see all the murals; all the street art. The Arts District is a great place for free expression. There’s nothing else like it around here.”
Notaro chalks it all up to the singer Celine Dion, who arrived in Las Vegas in the early 2000s with an entourage of artists from around the world to help stage her pioneering residency at Caesar’s Palace. Around that time, Vegas launched its ongoing First Friday arts festival in the district. Then the neighborhood’s first countercultural bar (The Velveteen Rabbit) opened, and the Arts District was born.
A ramble around the Vegas Arts District is a survey of every imaginable genre of visual art: The Brett Wesley Gallery’s collection of contemporary artists rivals anything you’ll find in New York’s SoHo. At Clay Arts Vegas, you can register to create hand-built, wheel-thrown pottery, while being inspired by works of some of the world’s top clay artists.
There’s even JRNY, an NFT art gallery, where from dozens of big-screen TVs arrayed like canvases, customers can select one-of-a-kind digital images for purchase. I’m not talking about landscapes or portraits or even dogs playing cards: Nearly all of these images are crudely rendered, pixelated faces of people or imaginary characters.
Their price tags run in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Sensing my confusion, a nice young staffer named Nick patiently tries to explain to me why a digital image of a bored ape is, in this very universe that I currently occupy, worth more than $60,000.
“These pieces of art have been developed and then minted through artificial intelligence based on the line, the contrast, the colors, the contouring shapes,” says Nick. “Finally, the computer spits out an artificially intelligent number, and that number is never replicated.
“It’s just like a Rolex, which likewise has a unique authenticity number.”
I nod, as if I understand, and stagger back into the Las Vegas sunlight. Where’s that desert? The sky, and the rocks, and the water. Those, I can understand.
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Comments
My brother Ed lives in Boulder City. He’s proud of his nice little city, but I don’t think he knows about Gold Butte National Monument that the author described. Ed took me to a place where you can buy many kinds of cactus, and desert decor, called something like Joe’s Cactus Shop. And he took me to see the Las Vegas Strip one afternoon. It’s not impressive in the daylight. I’ll ask him about Gold Butte National Monument.
Boulder City sounds like an excellent destination to take on my Honda Gold Wing touring motorcycle. I need to check it out.