Kyle Ranch
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Kyle Ranch was established by Conrad Kiel in 1875 in what is now North Las Vegas, Nevada. The site is currently managed by the city's park department as the Kyle Ranch Historic Site and is not open to the public. The original adobe structure, the oldest standing building in Las Vegas, and the Kyle Ranch Cemetery is about all that remains.
The cemetery is currently empty with the bodies, mostly family members of the founders, currently stored at UNLV.
The ranch is the site of an artisan well and a small wetlands, a reminder of what drew the first settlers and travelers to the site. The spring also provided water allowing the ranch to grow fruits and vegetables for other settlers in the area.
The site is marked as Nevada Historical Marker 224.
[edit] History
Archibald Stewart, an early pioneer in the area was killed in a gunfight on the ranch in 1884.
In 1900, Ed Kiel and William Kiel the owners were found shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide. The bodies were exhumed in the mid 1970's and it was determined that they had both been murdered.
The ranch was sold in 1903 to the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad.
Subsequent owners included Edwin Taylor (1924-39), whose cowboy ranch hands competed in national rodeos, and Edwin Losee (1939-58), who developed the Boulderado Dude Ranch here, a popular residence for divorce seekers during Nevada heyday as a place to get an easy divorce.
By 1976, after several more ownership changes, 26 remaining acres of the ranch were purchased jointly by the City of North Las Vegas and its Bicentennial Committee as a historic project. Despite promises to protect and improve the site and buildings, all that remains in 2006 is buildings near collapse and a parking area, built at a cost of $500,000, that is closed.
A 1992 fire destroyed the ranch's main building that had been built for the Boulderado Dude Ranch. This had been the largest structure on the site and was called the White House.
The city sold off all but 7 acres of the land it acquired to build an industrial park. In 2006, this was becoming a source of problems with water runoff from the spring and wetlands flowing into the industrial park. The cities plan to destroy more of the site to divert the water was meet with opposition. The ranch has also been used as a dump by the city potentially destroying much of its value as an archaeological site.
