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Valley of Fire State Park
The Valley of Fire is located in the Mojave Desert 55 miles northeast of Las Vegas just a few miles off of Interstate Highway 15. The valley's name is derived from the vivid colors of the sandstone formations spread throughout the park. About 150 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth and this area was covered by enormous sand dunes. Since then the earth has been uplifted by extreme pressures within and the dunes were turned into stone. After that wind and rain eroded the stone and created the present landscape.
The Basket Maker people are believed to have visited this area about three hundred years before the birth of Christ. They were followed by the Ancestral Puebloan People who lightly used the area until about 1150 AD. Following them were the Southern Paiute who still live in the nearby Moapa Valley. None of these people stayed in the area for any length of time due to the extreme scarcity of water.
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