Mystery Solved At Lost City Museum

The Lost City Museum was the scene of a passionate investigation last Thursday. Thirty members of a worldwide fan club scoured the building and grounds for the elusive footprints made 24 years ago by fictional teenage wonder sleuth Nancy Drew. They probed the pueblos. They sampled the soil. They examined the artifacts. They questioned current and former employees, and when all was said and done, they were thrilled.

The fan club members had actually walked

“This is so fascinating!” said Jenifer Fisher, president of the Nancy Drew Sleuths, a non-profit fan club of American and international fans and scholars who foster the Nancy Drew legacy. “The museum is exactly like it was described in the book.”

Fisher and her group’s visit to Overton was part of a five-day Las Vegas convention by the fan club celebrating the exploits of their heroine, the plucky young Nancy Drew, a protagonist detective in a series of mystery books the first of which was published in the 1930s. There were 56 original or classic books in which Nancy solved kidnappings, robberies, and myriad other criminal endeavors in cities around the world.

“Every year since 2001, we’ve had a convention in a city that was the setting for one of the Nancy Drew mysteries,” Fisher said. “This year it’s Las Vegas.

In the early 1970s, author Harriet Adams visited Las Vegas, the Lost City Museum and the Valley of Fire researching the book that eventually became “The Secret of the Forgotten City.” It was published in 1975.

Fisher said that while all of the Drew books were authored under the pen name Carolyn Keene, there were actually eight people who ghostwrote them including Adams.

In mystery #52, Nancy and her pals join some University of Nevada students on an archaeological dig for a forgotten city in the desert near Las Vegas. At one point in the book, the teen detective is invited to go out and marvel at the Las Vegas lights. “No,” she exclaims, “I’d rather visit the Lost City Museum,” and out she came to Overton.

Katheryn Olson, current director of the museum, met the fan club as it climbed from a Las Vegas tour bus. She told fans the museum was pretty much the same as it was when Adams described it in her book.

“There are a few differences today,” she explained. “In the book there was a large Palo Verde tree by the front door. That tree was removed a few years ago. Additionally, the skeleton that Nancy examines in the museum of a 32-year-old Native American is no longer here because of a law concerning Indian remains.”

Eager club members soon fanned out over the museum and grounds to explore and match reality with Nancy Drew’s museum.

Lea Fox, of Alameda, CA, who was identified as one of the world’s most prolific collectors of international Nancy Drew memorabilia, explained that visiting actual sites mentioned in the Drew books gives fans a chance to participate in the literature.

“This is the only way we can pretend we’re actually walking in Nancy’s footsteps,” Fox said. She paused outside one of the Lost City pueblos. “Look at his ladder! It’s exactly the same as described in the book.”

Visiting fans included Ellen Hough, 15, and her girlfriend Brittany Belkiewitz, 15, both of Indiana.

“We read the books, but we like Nancy Drew computer games best,” Brittany said. Her mother Marilyn Belkiewitz said she was escorting the teens as a birthday present for Brittany.

“I’m also a fan from way back,” she added.

Gudrun Waern, currently of Berlin, said that as a young girl in Sweden, she was a huge Nancy Drew fan. She traveled to the U.S. specifically to participate in the convention.

“In Sweden, Nancy Drew is called Kitty,” she said. “I read all her books as a girl.”

During a reception in an apartment connected to the museum, fan club members grilled Ann Sandstron and Sharree Nichols who were at the museum because of the visiting fans.

Both women were connected with the museum during Adams’ research visit. Sandstron was the museum curator and Nichols lived in the apartment where the reception was held.

After the museum visit, the fan club headed to the Valley of Fire to complete their real life Nancy Drew adventure.