Lost City Museum, Archaeological museum in Moapa Valley, United States.
The Lost City Museum is an archaeological museum in Overton, Nevada, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935 in Pueblo Revival style. Its adobe walls, flat roof, and protruding wooden beams echo Puebloan construction; a wooden ladder leans against the facade between two dark, doorless openings. The museum shares its grounds with an actual Ancestral Puebloan site and includes a reconstructed Puebloan house open to visitors.
The museum was built in 1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corps and operated by the National Park Service to display artifacts from the Pueblo Grande de Nevada sites, which were to be partly submerged by Lake Mead after the Hoover Dam was built. A 1981 extension incorporated some ruins to protect them and open them to the public.
The museum displays pottery, shells and jewelry excavated from Pueblo Grande de Nevada, and a reconstructed Puebloan house-site open to visitors. The adobe walls with protruding wooden beams and doorless openings show how the structures were built.
The museum stands in Overton, off State Route 169, with the reconstructed Pueblo house-site and the 1981 ruin enclosure on the same grounds as the 1935 adobe building. The two doorless openings and the ladder in the adobe wall lead between the indoor galleries and the outdoor ruins, so allow time for both. The grounds are gravel and partly unshaded.
Actual Pueblo ruins are located on the museum grounds, some partly reconstructed, allowing visitors to see the structures alongside the artifacts they contained. This direct connection between objects and their original setting helps people understand how these communities actually lived.
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