Get to Know the Area Around LV's Oldest Cemetery

⚰️ You know you want to take one of the Nevada Preservation Society’s annual, Halloween-timed, afternoon walking tours ofWoodlawn Cemetery this weekend. It’s the oldest burial ground in these parts, and a registered historic place. (Tickets are $25, and you should sign up soon.) 🪦While you’re in the vicinity, why not …

🍔Eat: Not exactly an eater’s paradise, this part of town. But! A 5-minute drive from Woodlawn is CaliBombs & Burgers. Recommended by Brent Holmes, Desert Companion’s erstwhile “Street Foodie,” this place has excellent burgers and onion bombs. Feeling more offbeat than an onion bomb? Try the Casa del Sabor food truck at Las Vegas Boulevard and Bonanza.

🧠Learn: The Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort tells the story of the first non-Indigenous permanent (or so they thought!) settlement in what’s now Las Vegas. Built in 1855, it was abandoned after a few years; the desert won that round. An early indication of what was to come, it's now a state park with a groovy visitors' center.

🦕Experience: Since the Woodlawn tour isn’t appropriate for kids under 12, why not have the most cemetery-averse adult in your party take the youngsters to the Las Vegas Natural History Museum to see the various exhibits: dinosaurs, ancient Egypt, geology.Consider: The spirited jumble of shapes that is the old Las Vegas Library: tower, cone, wedge, block. Note how this 1990 example of “desert modernism,” by the distinguished architect Antoine Predock, adds funky character to an otherwise tired stretch of urban skyline. Exactly as envisioned by former library director Charles Hunsburger — a visionary faded from civic memory — who believed a library should be more than a boxy book warehouse. (And who went on to build some of our finest libraries.)