Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area Records (MS-00399)

Red Rock Canyon was part of the public domain until 1936, when Congress included it in the initial establishment of the Desert Game Range (today known as the Desert National Wildlife Refuge). Later, Red Rock and the Spring Mountains were removed from the Desert Game Range and designated the Spring Mountain-Red Rock Recreation Complex. In the early 1960s, a small group, including members of the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club and the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association (NORA), began devising possible boundaries for a future national park. In 1964, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) utilized the Classification and Multiple Use Act to place some of Red Rock’s 10,000 acres on protective withdrawal status. In 1966 the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (now a part of the National Park Service) studied the Red Rock area and proposed that it be designated a recreation area via federal legislation. On October 5, 1967 nearly 62,000 acres were designated Red Rock Canyon Recreation Lands.

Throughout the 1970s the BLM developed Red Rock for visitors and assembled a team of interpretative rangers. Using federal funding, it constructed the Scenic Loop, which facilitated easier access to the area and the Visitor Center opened May 22, 1982. The BLM acquired a 5,000-acre parcel of land from Summa Corporation (a subsidiary of Howard Hughes Corporation) to maintain a buffer between the park and the rapidly-growing Summerlin planned community in Northwest Las Vegas.

In the late 1980s, a push began among southern Nevadans and state politicians to gain more protection for Red Rock by having Congress designate it a national conservation area (NCA). By April 1990, Senator Harry Reid and Nevada Representative James Bilbray introduced bills to this end. President George H. W. Bush signed Public Law 101-621 on November 16, 1990, and officially designated Red Rock as an NCA.

In November 1994, President Bill Clinton signed Public Law 103-450, which more than doubled the size of Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area (from 83,000 to 196,000 acres). Congressional passage of the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA) in 1998 added a final 1,002 acres to Red Rock Canyon NCA, bringing the park’s total acreage to 198,002.