Tule Springs Is Still Building Its First Real Trail. The Centennial Hills Entrance Isn't Waiting.

When was the last time you walked the national monument that starts at Durango Drive and Moccasin Road? Tule Springs Fossil Beds has sat just north of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas since December 19, 2014. It covers 22,650 acres, it's free, and it's open every day from sunrise to sunset. It also has no visitor center, no street address, and no permanent built trail yet. The first one is under construction right now on the far side of the monument.

That construction is why this cool season is a good time to use the Centennial Hills entrance. Work on the new trail is closed off in North Las Vegas, and the trailhead at Durango Drive and Moccasin Road is untouched. A full Tule Springs day from here pairs the desert at Durango & Moccasin with the fossils themselves at Ice Age Fossils State Park on North Decatur.

The Trail Everyone's Waiting For Opens in 2027

In August 2025, the National Park Service announced that construction had begun on the monument's first permanent, accessible trails, with a public opening expected in 2027. The main piece is the Tufa Trail, 3.3 miles through the southern part of the park, with bilingual wayside exhibits, tactile models, and wayfinding maps.

"The project will help the National Park Service conserve sensitive resources, and the trails will direct visitors to a well-marked, accessible trail with engaging exhibits that promote stewardship and prevent sensitive resources from becoming trampled or disturbed."

That's Superintendent Amanda Rowland in the same NPS release.

D.R. Horton is paying for the trail's design and construction entirely in kind. The deal comes from a 2018 land exchange between the Park Service and the City of North Las Vegas, and it's connected to the builder's Villages at Tule Springs community along the park's southeastern edge. Protectors of Tule Springs, the monument's official philanthropic partner, won a $71,457.60 federal Recreational Trails Program grant to pay for the interpretive and wayfinding features.

While the work goes on, two areas in North Las Vegas are closed:

• South of Grand Teton Drive, between Tule Springs Parkway and North 5th Street
• North of Grand Teton Drive, east of the Aliante Loop Trail

The Park Service says the closure doesn't affect the existing Durango and Aliante Loop trailheads. The NPS alerts page still shows the South Unit closure, with trailheads open. Check it before any visit, because the page's footer date and its live alert don't always change together.

Your Side of the Monument

The Park Service lists two main entrances. The North Unit entrance is at Durango Drive & Moccasin Road in Las Vegas, 89143. The South Unit entrance is at Aliante Parkway & Moonlight Falls Avenue in North Las Vegas. Neither has a street address, so set your map to the cross streets. The construction is all on the South Unit side. The Durango entrance gives you the whole North Unit experience as it stands today.

The Durango Loop comes in two lengths:

The NPS rates it easy to moderate. The views stretch to the Las Vegas, Sheep, and Spring Mountain ranges across Ice Age badlands. The self-guided tour has four QR-linked stops, and they make more sense in order:

1. Ancient groundwater and wetlands. This ground was wet once. The NPS says the fossils here were preserved in wetlands that grew and shrank between 100,000 and 12,500 years ago.
2. Deposition and flash-flood erosion. How the badlands were laid down, and how storms keep cutting them open.
3. Unstable wash banks. This stop has a citizen-science time-lapse station where you can photograph erosion for the record. The NPS warns that the wash walls nearby are badly undercut, so stay well back from the edges.
4. Fossil preservation. How bone survives in sediment, including Columbian mammoth tusks found here that can reach 11 feet.

The Park Service also says the fossils are often hard to spot because they blend into the sediment. If you do find one, leave it where it is. The NPS fossil page says digging or collecting requires an approved NPS scientific research and collection permit.

A few house rules make the Durango side work for most households. Under the monument's pet rules, leashed dogs are welcome on marked trails. Owners pick up after them, and the NPS notes that venomous snakes can bite dogs. The park's posted laws and policies allow bikes and Class 1 e-bikes on existing roads and trails, and horses on existing roads, trails, or washes. The site has no water, no shade, and no restrooms. Bring your own water. Winter temperatures average from the low 30s to the low 70s, and the trailhead closes at sunset.

Where the Fossils Actually Are

The Durango Loop has the landscape but no restroom and few fossils you can easily see. The monument's own basic information page points visitors to the fix. The NPS says many of its fossils are on display at the Ice Age Fossils State Park visitor center in North Las Vegas, which is also where you get the monument's passport stamp.

The state park sits at 8660 N. Decatur Blvd. and is open Wednesday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The visitor center has natural history exhibits, restrooms, drinking water, covered outdoor seating, and a gift shop. A large shade structure with picnic tables stands nearby. Entry is $3 per person, and children 12 and under get in free. 8NewsNow reported in August that the displays include a seven-foot mammoth tusk and a fossil nicknamed "Two-Tooth Tony."

The park has three trails, and the third one helps explain the second stop on your day:

• Megafauna Trail, 0.3 mile, with life-size sculptures of the animals that once lived at Tule Springs. It starts near the visitor center's back patio.
• Las Vegas Wash Trail, 1.5 miles, starting and ending at the Monumental Mammoth and running through the Upper Las Vegas Wash.
• Big Dig Trail, 1.2 miles, a loop from the Trench K Trailhead through trenches bulldozed during the Tule Springs Expedition. You reach it by a 0.5-mile connector from the Megafauna Trail.

Add the connector both ways and the Big Dig comes to a little over two miles, about the same as the long Durango Loop. A KOLO feature from March describes the Big Dig route through Trench K and other historic dig sites. Walk Durango in the morning, then the Big Dig, and you've seen the same Ice Age story twice. One stop shows the open badlands, the other shows the trenches where scientists dug the fossils out.

Keep the schedules straight. The monument is open daily from sunrise to sunset. The state park is closed Mondays and Tuesdays and closes at 4:30. An early start at Durango with a late-morning drive to Decatur fits both.

The Dates Worth Planning Around

Through the end of November, most of the programming is at the state park. Here's what's on the calendars, starting Friday, Oct. 30:

• Friday, Oct. 30: Nevada Day Celebration at Ice Age Fossils State Park, 9 a.m. to noon, with games, crafts, and activities. You pay regular entry and nothing more, and no registration is needed. The same morning, the NPS calendar lists a Nevada Day event featuring the monument at the Nevada State Museum Las Vegas at 9 a.m. It's also a free-entry day at Floyd Lamb Park, 9200 Tule Springs Road.
• Saturday, Oct. 31: Pop-Up Science: Sloth Salad, 9 to 11 a.m. at the state park, about giant ground sloths and what they ate, with a scavenger hunt.
• Nov. 14 and 15: Coffee Talk on Saturday, then a Megafauna Walk & Talk on Sunday.
• Nov. 21 and 22: The Monumental Mammoth Scavenger Hunt on Saturday, then a ranger-guided Big Dig hike on Sunday. The park describes the Big Dig hike as about two miles of uneven gravel, steps, and steep slopes, and says most of the route doesn't suit wheelchairs or mobility devices.
• Thursday, Nov. 26: Floyd Lamb Park's next free-entry day falls on Thanksgiving.
• Nov. 27 through 29: The Teratorn Trot on Friday, a Pop-Up Paleo Lab on Saturday, and "So You Want to be a Paleontologist?" on Sunday.
• Saturday, Dec. 19: The monument's anniversary. Protectors of Tule Springs has "Happy Birthday TUSK!" on its events calendar but hasn't posted program details yet.

The Thanksgiving-weekend run makes a good outing with out-of-town guests: three days in a row of state park programs, plus a free Floyd Lamb day on the holiday. Floyd Lamb is a separate city park, not the monument's visitor center.

If you walk the Durango Loop this fall and wonder which streets around Moccasin Road have the closest access to the monument, I'm happy to talk it through. I've lived in this valley for more than 40 years, and the northwest edge is a part of it I know well. Dorthy Sierra is one call or text away. Schedule Your Personalized Consultation.