Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Park

It's a big surprise for many visitors to often-glitzy and frequently licentious Las Vegas, but Southern Nevada has deep roots in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith with a definitively conservative culture. Faithful from Utah set up camp along a spring-fed creek in the 1850s. Although it was abandoned within a couple of years, today's visitors can get an idea of the hard-scrabble Mojave Desert life that early pioneers faced at this restoration.