Living Las Vegas

Real Life in the Shadow of the Strip

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Eldorado Canyon

Just 20 miles from the flash-and-dazzle of the Las Vegas Strip lies the solitude and quiet beauty of Eldorado Canyon. The canyon is nestled within the Eldorado Wilderness, at the mouth of the Colorado River, east of the small community of Nelson. In the 1860s, the canyon was the site of the biggest mining boom in early Nevada history, but its history goes back much further. A day trip from the city, an easy jaunt down U.S. Highway 95, is a step back in time.

Anasazi Indians may have frequented the canyon as early as 3,000 years ago. Spanish explorers and missionaries traversed the area in the mid-1770s in search of gold and silver, but their ore finds were not significant and their stays were brief. The Spanish moved on, leaving behind only the name of their dream: “Eldorado.”

By the mid-1800s, the canyon was no longer quiet. Heeding the cry “Go West!”, scores of miners, traders, frontiersmen and, later, Civil War deserters all found their way to Eldorado Canyon in search of gold, open land and adventure. All had hopes of striking it rich, for a strike-it-rich claim could make a hardworking miner a multimillionaire by today’s standards. But it was a rough-and-tough gamble for the early miners, whose tools were just picks and axes. Food was scarce, shelter primitive, and water was limited to the Colorado River, five miles away, and a few springs in the Eldorado Mountains.

The first discovery of gold came in 1857, soon after John Moss, a young Army interpreter-turned-miner, befriended a Chemehuevi Mojave chief named Irataba. The chief showed the young man a quality ore sample, and then led him to a rich vein in the canyon. Moss and his partner, Joseph Good, quickly began staking claims. By 1861, news of the great Gold Rush had traveled east, and steamboats began moving up and down the Colorado River delivering supplies and miners to Eldorado. By 1864, Eldorado City had a steady population of 89 miners working at the Techatticup, Savage, Gettysburg and Wall Street mines. For a time, it was the busiest port in Nevada.

Over the next five years, as the population grew to 500 rowdy men and women, disputes and killings among the miners and Indians became frequent. So extreme was the lawlessness (the nearest sheriff was 300 miles away in Lincoln County) that in 1867 a small detachment of infantrymen from Las Vegas Fort was stationed by the mouth of the Colorado River, charged with keeping an eye on things. A total of 136 soldiers rotated through the camp over the next two years. By then, the mining boom had slowed. The detachment was reassigned to the Presidio, near San Francisco, and its camp was dismantled. The mining operations continued at reduced capacity until the turn of the century, producing about $5 million over 40 years.

Now quiet, Eldorado Canyon is a desert habitat for bighorn sheep, kit foxes, coyotes, turkey vultures, red-tailed hawks and many other birds. Native plants and cacti hug the rugged terrain. Groves of teddy bear cholla, fire barrel cactus, beaver tail cactus, creosote, globemallow, brittlebush, rock nettle and desert willow thrive in the canyon with little or no water. Old mining roads traverse the mountainous ridges and washes. The mines lie abandoned, and the men are gone, too; only the ruins of some of the old stone cabins remain.

Eldorado Canyon is now haunting in its solitude, and it makes for an interesting day trip from Las Vegas. Go take a look around on your own, or take a tour led by a commercial operator (mine tours, horseback tours and ATV tours are all available). Either way, you’ll feel a kinship with the adventurers of old.