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The Old Las Vegas Mormon fort was a major campsite for travelers through Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Springs became a major campsite along the Mormon Road. In 1852, Mormon mail contractor George Chorpenning built the first non-Native American structure in Southern Nevada.
Mormon missionaries took the structure apart in 1855 and used the materials to build a 150-square-foot adobe fort with eight two-story houses.
The missionaries built the fort, known as the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort, downstream of the springs near Las Vegas Creek. They planted fruit and shade trees and established friendly relations with the Paiutes.
As part of the Mormons' plan for a "State of Deseret," they selected the Las Vegas Valley for settlement to offer a safe way station beside the long Mormon Road between San Bernardino, California and Salt Lake City, Utah. The Mormon missionaries abandoned the fort in 1858.
Hundreds of wagon trains moved through the valley and camped by the springs. Thieves drove livestock through the valley in the 1840s and thousands of sheep and horses were driven across the Mojave Desert to California. The livestock quenched their thirst at the springs and fed on the surrounding meadow grasses.
The Mormon missionaries used water from the Las Vegas Creek to help smelt lead from Mt. Potosi, Nevada's first lode mine. The lead contained so much silver that it did not make good bullets, and the mine was abandoned in 1858, when the missionaries were called elsewhere.
