Pueblo Grande De Nevada
Clark County, Clark County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Pueblo Grande De Nevada. Indians of a highly-developed civilization lived throughout Moapa valley from 300-1100 A.D. several hundred ancient pithouses, campsites, rockshelters, salt mines and caves of ancestral Puebloan people make up what is commonly known as “Lost City.” These people cultivated corn, beans, and squash in fields irrigated by river water. They also gathered wild seeds and fruits and hunted widely for deer, antelope, desert bighorn sheep, small mammals, and birds. They wove fine cotton cloth, fired beautifully painted and textured pottery, and mined and traded salt and turquoise to coastal tribes for seashells. Early dwellings were circular pithouses below ground. Later dwellings above ground were single storey adobes having up to 100 rooms.Lake Mead, created by Hoover Dam, flooded the most intensively developed portion of lost city.
Erected by Moapa Valley Chamber Of Commerce
The Story
From about 300 to 1100 A.D., ancestral Puebloan people built a thriving civilization across Moapa Valley, leaving hundreds of pithouses, campsites, salt mines, and caves now called the "Lost City." They farmed irrigated fields of corn, beans, and squash, wove fine cotton cloth, fired painted pottery, and traded salt and turquoise to distant coastal tribes for seashells. Their homes evolved from sunken pithouses to sprawling adobe pueblos of up to a hundred rooms. The heart of the settlement now lies flooded beneath Lake Mead.
Why it matters
Pueblo Grande de Nevada preserves evidence of a sophisticated Indigenous society whose trade networks reached the Pacific centuries before European arrival, much of it lost to a modern reservoir.
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Related events
- · Construction of Hoover Dam
Themes & tags
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