MARY ELIZABETH WARREN

Mary Elizabeth von Till (“Liz”) Warren passed away peacefully on April 21, 2021.

Born April 16, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, she was the sixth of nine children of Ellen Mcnulty von Till and Louis A. von Till. Liz graduated from Barnard College in 1955, and subsequently entered the graduate program in anthropology at Northwestern University. There she met Claude N. Warren. The two married that year, and moved west to Seattle, Washington. The couple had four children by the time they settled in Las Vegas in 1969.

That year, Liz discovered her love of the desert and public lands, as she joined a campaign to save Tule Springs State Park. She earned her master’s degree in history at UNLV in 1974, by which time she was already a passionate public historian and committed historic preservationist. Today’s Springs Preserve originated in a campaign waged by Liz and her husband in 1972 to re-route construction of US 95 around Big Springs, site of “the meadows” to which early Spanish travelers applied the name “Las Vegas.” Subsequent threats to the site inspired Liz’s return to battle in 1988, and again in 1996, this final effort culminating in the creation of Springs Preserve.

Also in the early 1970s, she began her fight to save the Old Mormon Fort from scheduled destruction. In 1974, she organized the Preservation Association of Clark County, which ultimately achieved creation of the Old Mormon Fort State Park. At the same time, she championed the winning campaign to stop a proposed housing expansion that would have destroyed Spring Mountain Ranch. Leading the effort to have the ranch designated a state park, she served as its first interpretive park ranger. Other campaigns saved the original Las Vegas High School, the Fifth Street School, and Goodsprings Elementary School. In 1992 she wrote the application placing the Huntridge Theater on the list of the National Register for Historic Places. She was a driving force in the creation of the Neon Museum; Clark County Wetlands Park and its visitors center; Valley of Fire Visitors Center; Red Rock Canyon Visitors Center; the Goodsprings Trail; and the Whitney Mesa Trail. She wrote and lectured extensively on the Old Spanish Trail and helped found the Old Spanish Trail Association, efforts which bore fruit when Congress made the route a national historic trail in 2003. A lifelong civil rights activist, she also was a major interpreter of the Las Vegas Pioneer Trail in the city’s historic Westside. In the late 1970’s Liz developed Cultural Focus Tours as a division of the Allied Arts Council of Nevada, providing, for nearly a decade, tours of “the flip side of Las Vegas” including the landmarks she had preserved. Over five decades she published more than a dozen academic papers and was featured in multiple newspaper stories and television news features. Her legacy is enshrined in the places she loved and saved for public enjoyment.

Liz was predeceased by her daughter, Susan Elizabeth Warren Kunkler. She is survived by her sons Claude, Jr. of Galway, Ireland; Louis of Davis, California; and Jonathan of Las Vegas, eleven grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren. Donations to UNLV Special Collections in lieu of flowers.