History of Mormon Fort in Las Vegas holds up

LAS VEGAS — "Sin City" is built on casinos and carousing, but Las Vegas was born of adobe and Mormons.

"This is considered by many to be the first beginnings of the city of Las Vegas," said Chris Macek, park supervisor at the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort.

The visual history of this city's origins — and the role played by Latter-day Saints — has been incrementally restored over the past six decades and is now protected within the quiet walls of a state historic park. The Old Mormon Fort has endured the churning change of a dynamic city and is representative of the LDS presence in a valley home to approximately 100,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And to this day, the story is remarkably preserved in a block of 19th-century bricks.

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Inside a bland, rectangular building on the dusty grounds of the Old Mormon Fort, visitors will find a historical treasure — and a Las Vegas anomaly.

Around 1865, a rancher named O.D. Gass acquired property along the Las Vegas Creek and constructed both a house and storage building using the foundation and walls of an abandoned fort. The storage building is still standing, and though most of it has been refurbished, a section of adobe dating back to 1855 is enclosed within the western wall — bricks used by Mormon settlers to construct the first nonnative settlement in the Las Vegas valley.

Today, the Old Mormon Fort is billed as "the place where Las Vegas began." Macek finds it incongruous that a piece of the first building in Las Vegas remains intact.

"Especially in a town that's blowing things up every few years," he said.

On June 17, 1855, a group of 30 Mormon missionaries, led by William Bringhurst and sent under the direction of President Brigham Young, stopped four miles east of the Las Vegas springs and held church services. The following day, they commenced building a fort.

An article from the 1969 Church News described the settlers' purpose as a "two-fold mission." They were to establish a "halfway" station on the Utah-California trail and serve as missionaries to the American Indians in the area. According to a 1949 Church News article, "the Mormon gospel was preached with typical zeal," resulting in several converts.

In addition to the protective fort, the settlers built cabins and established a post office. Irrigated water from the nearby creek was used for crops and orchards. Family members arrived later, and a school for both Mormon and native children was organized, according to the Church News.

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The Mormons' presence in the area, however, was short. Two years after their arrival, the missionaries returned to Utah.