Pueblo Grande de Nevada
familiar. We climbed into Jose-the-truck and made a journey we had promised ourselves for many years: The Lost City Museum in Overton, Nevada.
Today the sun was warmer, partly because we have reached altitude closer to what we find
Pueblo Grande de Nevada
familiar. We climbed into Jose-the-truck and made a journey we had promised ourselves for many years: The Lost City Museum in Overton, Nevada.
The story is that a community of Pueblo Indians, known as Anasazi "The ancient ones", lived in the years before the Christian Era where Overton now stands. They had brought their culture from Hopi and Zuni cultures and proved to be master potters and builders, producing stone and clay dwellings of several rooms, sometimes built in multiple layers, an art which was not known to their neighbors. They struggled with the harsh climate and frequent droughts. Ultimately they moved on, apparently re-joining Zuni and Hopi communities.
Fast forward several centuries. In the 1930s, Boulder Dam, now known as Hoover Dam, was begun as a federal project to help conquer the water shortages in the Southwest; 
Pueblo replica built by CCC
although it was planned to be located directly above the abandoned Anasazi land, the engineers and the federal government ignored protests from archaeologists and Native Americans and went ahead with the project - and the city of the Anasazi was completely inundated.
It's not the end of the story, however, because ultimately partly due to improvements in archaeological techniques, discoveries of building remains have been located in areas which were not flooded, artifacts including pottery have turned up, and interest has 
Underground location
increased in this part of Native American history.
The trip to Overton, a pleasant, prosperous Mormon farming community, took us almost two hours. We spent another hour at the small State-owned museum, mostly staffed by volunteers. It holds a wealth of material which they display in several display areas. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps were some of the first archaeologists and their helpers, creating, among other things, a replica of an ancient Pueblo house of two stories; the upper floor was reached by a ladder. The CCC also built a replica of an underground location accessed from above by a ladder-like tree trunk (see photo).
This is a small museum but we found it charming and interesting, because it tells two stories: the story of the Anasazi, who moved from Navaho lands to a new environment for reasons which still remain mysterious, and the advantages of using archaeology to increase knowledge of these people.
It was startling to see on our return to our hotel how the scenery changed so suddenly from silent rugged mountains to the skyscrapers of Las Vegas --- after driving for an hour in rugged mountain terrain, we turned a corner and came face to face with the casino skyscrapers of the Las Vegas Strip.