Source: Atlas Obscura
Not far beyond the flashy facades of the Las Vegas Strip, right above the line that separates Clark and Lincoln counties, are a host of hidden treasures. Five of the most beautiful but relatively under-the-radar state parks in America are located in this stretch of Nevada, each with its own pristine landscape and unique character.
Inside these extraordinary parklands, visitors can find fishing, canyoning, trail-running, hiking, exploring, boating, and some of the most picturesque camping spots in the continental U.S– not to mention superb mountain biking trails located just beyond the parks themselves. For the history buffs venturing to Lincoln County, there’s also Elgin Schoolhouse Historic State Park: the site of a preserved one-room schoolhouse that operated from 1922 through 1967.
All together, these parks are a testament to the fact that the Silver State’s shiniest treasure has never been its manufactured glitz, but rather the natural beauty that runs, like a vein, right through it.
Lincoln County was formally established in 1866, two years after Nevada was admitted into the Union—and until 1909, when Clark County was formed—Lincoln County included Las Vegas. About two decades after the county lines were redrawn, two major events occurred that would transform this area. The first was in 1928, when plans for Hoover Dam (then called Boulder Dam) were authorized by Congress. The dam was set to be the largest single concrete construction project in American history, and thousands of laborers picked up and made their way to the worksite.
The second event came in 1933, not long after construction kicked off on the dam. FDR’s New Deal had yielded a job-creating initiative known as the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was a 300,000-person workforce composed primarily of workers who hadn’t been trained in any kind of particular trade, but who were able-bodied and in need of jobs. The dam project had kicked off a huge amount of interest in southern Nevada, and the state’s senators seized the opportunity to develop that portion of the state. Recognizing the area’s unusual concentration of natural wonders, the state’s government directed resources (also courtesy of the New Deal) toward establishing its first state parks.
Today, the parks continue to represent Nevada’s commitment to its incredible landscape. Lincoln County’s state parks aren’t the car-clogged, tourist-flocked places of postcards’ past. They are something else: undisturbed, under-the-radar, and utterly breathtaking slices of nature, and all a relatively short drive from Las Vegas.
Founded on lands donated in 1926 by a rancher named James Ryan (who purchased it from its 1873 settlers, Samuel and Hannah Kershaw), Kershaw-Ryan State Park is the closest of these great escapes to central Vegas. The…
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