Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort Historic Park

The Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort is where the city literally began: an adobe remnant of the 22,000-square-foot outpost Mormon missionaries raised in 1855 beside a spring-fed creek, the first permanent non-native settlement in the Las Vegas Valley and now a Nevada State Historic Park. That creek was the only free-flowing water for miles, which is the entire reason a settlement happened here rather than somewhere else in the Mojave. The $3 admission (kids 12 and under free) covers the reconstructed stockade, the artifacts inside the fort, and the visitor center's exhibits and photographs. The whole site walks in 30 to 60 minutes.

Come with the right expectations: this is a quiet, low-tech history stop, not a spectacle, and its schedule trips people up. It opens Tuesday through Saturday only, 8 AM to 4:30 PM with last admittance at 4, and stays closed Sunday and Monday. Summer heat bakes the exposed grounds, with the visitor center the only air conditioning. It sits Downtown at Las Vegas Blvd North and Washington, a 15-minute drive from the Strip, and the smart move is stacking it with the Science & Natural History Museum directly across the street plus the Neon and Mob museums within a mile.