Leaving Las Vegas

Long before slot machines, computerized dancing fountains and sequined and feathered dancing chorus lines, there was the desert and the mountains, the mighty Colorado River. And, there were generations of Native Americans and pioneer homesteaders who lived here long before the glitz, glamour and roulette wheels.

Just 30 miles across the desert that surrounds Las Vegas, momentous sandstone rocks create towering cliffs carved into fantastic shapes by millions of years of wind and water. On the ground, there are fields of sand dunes polka-dotted with tiny and fragile desert plants clinging to life.

I was at Valley of Fire, Nevada's first state park, to see its petroglyphs, images carved into the rock by Native Americans as much as 1,500 years ago. These petroglyphs decorate a wall of rock, perhaps 30 feet high. I found them at the end of a five-minute walk down a sandy path that had been a stream bed thousands of years before.

The rock held hundreds of carved images - some of them recognizable human shapes, animals and plants, and others squiggles I could not interpret without guidance.

Nobody knows whether such petroglyphs are accounts of successful hunts or harvests, directions to the nearest fresh water, family histories or ancient grafitti. I just marveled at the jumble of shapes and the artistry of their creators, and found myself wondering whether these "constructions" would outlast the modern glass and granite cliffs downtown.

Valley of Fire is 30 minutes north of Vegas; Red Rock Canyon is 30 miles west. There are more towering sandstone cliffs here, but these are memorable for their jumble of colors rather than for otherworldly wind-whipped shapes.

The Calico Mountains in this canyon are endless layers of pink, salmon and rose sandstone. The colors seem to shimmer and glow in the golden light of a late afternoon. I couldn't linger for the sunset, because that would mean missing historic Spring Mountain Ranch.

Homesteaded in 1876, it was a working cattle ranch for three generations of the Wilson family. In 1955, it was sold to the wife of Alfred Krupp, the German munitions industrialist.

Vera Krupp added a swimming pool and a secret doorway from her bedroom, perhaps to escape from any modern rustlers seeking to snatch her famous Krupp diamond, the one Richard Burton later bought for Elizabeth Taylor.

The house is an interesting medley of Victorian pot belied stoves and rusting farm tools and Fifties wallpaper. The 500-acre property was sold to the state in 1974, following public outrage over a plan to turn it into a townhouse/condominium complex.

It's amazing how much nature and history you can find just by leaving Las Vegas.

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