ermanent occupation. In 1976 Science News raised the alarm about the “Fragile Desert” in a report on the annual 150-mile Barstow–Las Vegas motorbike race across the Mojave. According to the report, the race had destroyed more than 9,000 acres of desert, obliterating plant and animal life, as well as archaeological sites. 26 The race no longer happens, but big increases in both population and ATVs have meant increased stresses on protected lands. Today “more than 28 million homes” are located “less than 30 miles from federally owned land that millions of people increasingly view as their extended back-yards.” 27 Engine noise and emissions add to the problem, as do issues of accessing public lands through private property.
Off-road recreation remains a booming business, and urban marketing firms are riding the trend. Seeking to diversify Nevada’s entertainment profile, R&R Partners, the firm behind the “Only in Vegas” advertising campaign, developed the “Nevada Passage Adventure Competition” in 2003. This reality-show competition showcased rural Nevada as a premier destination for outdoor adventure; 20 people were selected to participate in competitive rock climbing, jet skiing, off-road driving, mountain biking, sandboarding and kayaking. Critics describe such transformations of Old West into New West as the creation of a theme park or “leisure colony” for the privileged. 28 In which case we might argue that the theming of Las Vegas and the theming of the Mojave have in a sense merged, blurring the distinctions between the spectacular Strip and the elemental landscape. “What plays in the Mojave, stays in the Mojave” might be the fitting slogan, as the vast sublimity of the desert gives way to a recreational utopia dotted with golf courses and crisscrossed by ATV tracks.
More than 20 years ago, in Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner described great desert civilizations that flourished and collapsed, suggesting that in the American West, “where water is concerned, logic and reason have never figured prominently in the scheme of things.” 29 And now, in a moment of great uncertainty, one thing is certain: the Mojave is a land of limited resources, and no resource is more limited than water. The need for water, in ever-larger amounts, may set final, insurmountable limits on the unlikely urbanization of the desert. Today Lake Mead, from which the Las Vegas Valley draws 90 percent of its water, is falling to record low levels. 30 Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography predict the reservoir may go dry by 2021. 31
Yet at Lake Las Vegas, developers continue to drape Italianate gardens and golf courses over desert hillsides. Creating such a mirage required submerging the Las Vegas Wash, a once natural and ecologically sensitive drainage system, and confining the limited water to two 96-inch-diameter pipes that run under Lake Las Vegas toward the dwindling Lake Mead. Fifty miles north of Las Vegas, at Coyote Springs, an isolated area once off-limits as a rocket test site, a new 43,000-acre development — 150,000 residences, “buzzing village streetscapes,” fifteen golf courses, and several lakes and water parks — has begun construction. 32 This new exurb features xeriscaping, yet its “lifestyle activities” include golfing and boating, for which it will need to appropriate extensive water resources, potentially draining wildlife sanctuaries. Coyote Springs has been the subject of environmental litigation. 33 As with many sites in the Mojave, accessing limited water resources for such vast interventions can be construed as a form of extraction, one that serves not only vital needs but also questionable desires.
Such desires exemplify what many call “desert denial.” Water is supplied by sources above and below ground; the most important are the Colorado River and its reservoirs. Lake Mead is bracketed by Lake Powell, Lake Mojave and Lake Havasu, all fed by the Colorado and its tributaries. Seven states and Mexico have rights to the Colorado waters, the percentages determined by complex apportionment guidelines and adjusted accor