Tule Springs
Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Tule Springs. Tule springs is one of the few sites in the United States where evidence suggests the presence of man before 11,000 B.C.Scientific evidence shows this area, once covered with sagebrush and bordered with yellow-pine forests, had many springs. These springs were centers of activity for both big game animals and human predators. Evidence shown at these fossil springs shows the presence, 14,000 to 111000 years ago, of several extinct animals: the ground sloth, mammoth, prehistoric horse, and American camel. The first Nevada record of the extinct giant condor comes from Tule Springs.Early man, perhaps living in the valley as early as 13,000 years ago, and definitely present 11,000 years ago, was a hunter of the big game.Small populations of desert culture people, from about 7,000 years ago to the historic period, depended upon vegetable foods and small game for subsistence.Late Pleistocene geological stratigraphy in few other areas is as complete and well known.
Erected by Nevada State Historic Preservation Office
The Story
Tule Springs is one of the rare North American sites offering evidence of human presence stretching back many thousands of years, when this now-arid basin held sagebrush flats, yellow-pine forests, and abundant springs. Those waters drew Ice Age megafauna — ground sloths, mammoths, prehistoric horses, camels, and the first Nevada record of the extinct giant condor — and the early hunters who pursued them. Later desert-culture peoples lived here for millennia, subsisting on plants and small game, while the site's remarkably complete Pleistocene geology records it all.
Why it matters
Tule Springs is a landmark of American archaeology and paleontology, preserving one of the continent's clearest windows into Ice Age life and the earliest peopling of the desert West.
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