Rising From The Ashes: Restoration Begins At LDS Ranch At Warm Springs

Editor’s Note: The LDS Warm Springs property is currently a construction site. It is not yet open to the public and unauthorized visitors to the area are prohibited.

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

After nearly seven years of being completely closed to the public, work has finally begun to bring things back into operation at the LDS Ranch property at Warm Springs.
Contractor crews have been working over the past six weeks on cleaning up the area, cutting back the dense jungle of vegetation that had grown up over the years since the gates were closed.
Plans are already being carried out to repair and update the facility, restore the pools and construct new infrastructure for visitors. If all goes according to schedule, the facility is expected to be ready to open again by early next summer.

The property, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has provided an oasis recreation area for regional Church activities for decades. It’s beautiful spring-fed pool alongside the large ranch house, lovingly referred to as “the Big House,” has provided childhood memories for generations of church members.

For a time the property was a working ranch and a welfare farm for the Church. But by the mid 1990s it had become mainly a recreation area for group activities. A larger, more modern pool was installed in addition to the natural spring pool. There were fields for activities and sports. And there were plenty of campground facilities in the area down below the pools. It was a beautiful destination for youth camps and other social activities.

But all that came to a screeching halt on July 1, 2010. On that hot summer day, a contractor crew, which had been working clearing brush on the neighboring Southern Nevada Water Authority property, accidentally started a fire. The blaze quickly burned through more than 600 acres in the Warm Springs area.

Before the fire had been brought under control, it had completely destroyed the LDS Recreation area. The “Big House” and some trailers being used as missionary quarters were burned to the ground.
Shortly after this unfortunate incident the church hired a contractor to come in and clear out the debris. Crews knocked over what was left of the “Big House” and cleared out all of the rubble.

But that wasn’t the end of the misfortune at the property. A year later a major flood rushed through the area putting what was left of the infrastructure underwater and washing much of it away. The floods left a thick layer of mud in the pools, washed away bridges, destroyed the campsites and washed out the road that accessed them.

At that point, the future of the facility was uncertain. Church leaders struggled to determine what to do with the now disfunctional property. Area Director of LDS Facilities Mark Waite, who is President of the Elkhorn Stake in Las Vegas, said that the property went through a period of time when Church leaders didn’t know whether to keep it or sell it off.
“Finally the Stake Presidents in the area got together and decided that they did not want to sell it,” Waite said. “When the insurance settlements eventually came in, they felt like there was enough there that they could restore it to exactly what it needs to be.”

The Church hired contractor Boyd Martin to begin the process of restoration. With that began a long process of developing plans and obtaining permits to begin the work.
“There was a lot of work to do just to get ready to work on it,” Waite said. “The permitting alone took forever. But we finally got that and have been moving forward with the plans.”

It took work crews nearly three weeks just to clear the vegetation that had grown up in the area.
“Every year, these palm trees throw off thousands of seeds,” said Brent Evans of contractor Boyd Martin, who also lives in Logandale. “So when we got here we could see how many generations of palm trees had grown up in each year that the area had been closed down. It was a big job cutting through all of that vegetation and clearing it away.”

The list of restoration, repairs, updates and improvements are extensive. The crews cleaned out all the vegetation that had grown up in the old spring pool. They cleared the jungle that had grown up around the newer pool and cleaned the thick layer of mud that had dried to the bottom of it. They plan to resurface the cement pool, paint the bottom of the pool according to code and install required safety fencing. They will also supply security fencing around the property.

A new restroom facility will be built on the hill above the old spring pool. Along with that will be concrete sidewalks and stairs leading to the new restrooms.
In the place where the “Big House,” stood, they plan to construct a new pavilion with picnic tables and other amenities for group activities.
Perhaps best of all, unlike all of the facilities of the past, each of these amenities will be built up to current code, Waite said.

“In the past, life was a little different,” Waite said as he noted evidence of old Eagle Scout projects of the past embedded in the infrastructure of the property. “You could come out and just put something in with whatever supplies had been donated for that purpose. We used to have every different PVC pipe that you can imagine running out here. People would just come out on a Saturday and run a water line as a project. We don’t do those kinds of things anymore.”

Nowadays the key improvements to the area will be done uniformly and up to the appropriate code using a qualified contractor, Waite said. Of course, that requires more time and it costs more money than using volunteer labor. So the entire area will not be able to be restored at once with the initial insurance settlement funding.

The focus will be on the pools and the infrastructure in the immediate surrounding area. That may mean that the campgrounds and the fields down below would not receive any attention in this round of work, Waite said. But additional projects may be added later on to improve those areas, depending on how successfully the area functions once opened, he said.
“As we go along, the Church will develop a strategy of how far they want to take this,” Waite said. “If that is the case, maybe in a year or two, the Church can look at it as something that will continue to serve a lot of people in the area, then we will see other projects planned and going out for bid. We will just have to see.”

The current contract’s timeframe has the project being completed sometime in June of 2017. Until that time, the property is considered as a construction zone and is completely closed to the public. Evans was emphatic that the contractor company could not allow the local public to come onto the property to explore what is going on there.
“I just really don’t want to have to be the bad guy and tell people they have to get off the property,” Evans said. “With it being an active construction site, we just can’t allow local folks to come up and look around. So I hope that I won’t have to be the bad guy. I’d rather not do that.”

Once the project is complete, there may still be more time before the facility is actually open for use again, Waite emphasized. Once the site is released from the contractor back to the Church, it will then be placed under the supervision of a coordinating council of regional Stake Presidents.
Waite said that it was anticipated that missionaries would be called, once again, to reside on site and oversee the area. A Stake President, most likely from a stake in Las Vegas, would be assigned to be the agent authority of the facility in scheduling its use.

But exactly when, and under what terms, the facility will be open again is still undecided, Waite said.
“It hasn’t yet been determined what or when the opening is actually going to be,” Waite said. “Once the project is complete, the coordinating council will have to determine just what that will be. It is they who will determine the usage going forward.”