The Lost City Museum ($6 for adults) at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada is an informative and exciting history and archaeology museum filled with artifacts, information, an Anasazi / Ancestral Puebloan Pueblo recreation, an actual Basketmaker pit house, petroglyphs, and more. It is more than worth a stop, especially if you're into the history of the indigenous people of the Four Corners Region.

This place absolutely surprised me. I had no idea about its history or the fact that the Anasazi had a salt mining colony all the way out here, quite far from the Four Corners, the Colorado Plateau, and the Chaco / Aztec / Mesa Verde sphere of influence. I have done a podcast series on the Anasazi / Ancestral Puebloans and I will be adding another episode because of the information I learned here.

While there’s evidence that people began living at the site around 8,000 BC, the Basketmaker culture really began to occupy it around AD 300. Then a few generations of salt mining Anasazi, probably at the behest of the Chacoan government, began to occupy the area, no doubt trading with peoples to the west at the Pacific and sending salt back to the Four Corners area. The site was abandoned by the Anasazi around the time of the Anasazi Civil War to the east, but that’s my interpretation.

In 1924, the site, which is not at this location, but the site was investigated and later excavated at the now submerged old Mormon Colony town of St. Thomas. Then the ruins were recreated in St. Thomas, which again, is now underwater. So these ruins are a recreation of a recreation. But that doesn’t limit their awesomeness as there is an actual Pit House at the site, basically in the driveway of the Museum. Also, the museum has plenty of artifacts from Clovis points to Anasazi Black on White Mesa Verde Pottery. It is absolutely worth a visit and if you’re lucky, you can talk to the head archaeologist of the site like I did! I learned a lot and I cannot wait to learn more from the literature I picked up at the well stocked gift shop.