What good is a brand-new national park if it’s buried under a few decades’ worth of cement, carpet, glass and other junk? To scientists, politicians and conservationists, Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, on the northern edge of Clark County, is a research and tourism gold mine. To casual onlookers, it was a dump. So, for its first official event, newly minted Park Superintendent Vince Santucci hosted an April 11 cleanup to prepare the site for its expected illustrious future. Here’s the debris, deconstructed:
60: volunteers who participated
200: hours they put in
30: length, in yards, of the dumpster they filled
9: pickup truck loads of debris removed
7: age of the youngest volunteer, Gemma Welcher
1: number of critically endangered Las Vegas bearpoppies in bloom that Welcher and her brother found
