Red Rock center gets face-lift

     By Judy DeLoretta
     View staff writer
      The visitor's center at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area has just undergone major landscaping and redesign projects.
      Volunteers and Bureau of Land Management employees have been working together in recent weeks to move plants, redesign parking areas and make the visitor's center more easily accessible.
      The project has been made possible because of the $5 per-vehicle entrance fee that's been collected since November 1997.
      New restrooms and easier accessibility to those who use wheelchairs are just two of the new features at Red Rock.
      The steep ramp accessing the visitor's center also has been redesigned.
      Additionally, the parking lot has been reconfigured to accommodate more vehicles.
      "It was just never imagined how many people would be visiting Red Rock when the visitor's center was built in 1982," Red Rock assistant field officer Dave Wolf said.
      The project awarded about $750,000 to contractors to do the parking lot reconstruction. Meanwhile, Richard Leifried, a certified Master Gardener, has helped move 25,000 plants for various projects. About 1,200 have been moved to the Red Rock area.
      "We have a great volunteer base that has assisted with the re-landscaping," Wolf said.
      "The Master Gardeners volunteers act as a plant rescue operation sometimes," Leifried said. "In Nevada, we have 45 different varieties of cactus -- and 25 of them are found on the property of Red Rock."
      The Master Gardeners officials and several other volunteers have been meticulously removing the plant varieties from the Blue Diamond Hill/James Hardie gypsum mining operation, located in the Red Rock area, which spans about 197,000 acres.
      The plants have carefully been replanted or stored at the visitor's center for the relandscaping.
      "These plant varieties we've been moving have an 80 percent survival rate," Leifried said. "We're happy to rescue these varieties. Otherwise they would be destroyed by highway or mining projects. It's move 'em or lose 'em."
      The visitor's center project also will include new trails and signage.
      "The Master Gardeners volunteers are teaching others about transplanting techniques," Wolf said. "There are important issues like replanting a plant facing the same direction in which it was growing."
      Plants that were moved to Red Rock include several that are up to 200 years old.
      All plants that have been moved to the visitor's center must be from the Red Rock area.
      "I decided that's the way it's gotta be," Leifried said. "I want people to see what nature has brought to us, and that means plants that we know belong in that environment."
      In addition to the visitor's center project, the Master Gardeners volunteers are also working on an orchard in the Northwest to find out which plant varieties can fare well in the desert climate, as well as the Logandale trails system upgrade.
      There are more than 100 Master Gardeners in Las Vegas, many of whom are retired, and many of whom are from varied backgrounds -- retired professors and educators, and retired law enforcement and military personnel.
      Additional volunteers on the Red Rock Visitor's Center project include Biological Sciences of UNLV, Boy Scouts of America's Cub Scout troops, Friends of Red Rock, the Kiwanis Club of Southwest Las Vegas and Las Vegas, the Calico Coyotes, the Clark County Leadership Forum, the Goodwin Group, Girl Scouts of America troops, the Las Vegas Parrot Heads, the Las Vegas Valley Bike Club, Las Vegas West Rotary Club, Las Vegas Mountaineers, Meadows School, Penn State Alumni, Optimist Club, Red Rock Audubon Society, Red Rock Downhill, Sun City Sunshine Club, the Booth Group and Unitarian Universalist members.
      Groups that have adopted planters at the newly designed site include the Nevada Trail Coalition, the UNLV Research Division, the Flamingo Hilton, Bonanza High School, Sprint, Nevada Power Co., America West Airlines and Southwest Airlines.