Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, located just a few miles west of Las Vegas, is named after the deep red 3,000-foot (914.4 meters) high sandstone cliffs that are perched above the dusty wastelands of the mighty Mojave Desert that encompasses it. The site has served as ancestral homes for the tribes of Paiute, Patayan, Anasazi, San Dieguito and Pinto since 11,000 BCE and thus features a diverse and rich network of vivid petroglyphs that can be been scattered all along its canyons, making the conservation area a popular destination for admirers of Native Indian culture and traditions. An ecosystem rich in flora and fauna, the Utah desert-parsley, the Mojave yucca, the ponderosa pine, the desert bighorn sheep and the endangered desert tortoise is some of its most notable inhabitants.