This building represents one type of standard housing that was designed by the Bureau of Reclamation for use by government employees at large dam construction and water development projects in the western United States from the to the The building served as a residence for Desert National Wildlife Refuge staff in Las Vegas, Nevada from to about when it was converted to use for offices and storage. The Desert National Wildlife Refuge was created in to promote preservation of desert wildlife, particularly desert bighorn sheep. The Refuge is the largest wildlife refuge in the contiguous United States. Description: The Desert National Wildlife Refuge Residence is a one-story wood frame residential building with side-gable roof and a full basement.
Exterior walls are clad with horizontal wood siding on the body and vertical boards with dog-ear finish on the gable ends. The roof has exposed rafters in moderately overhanging eaves, and the roof is covered with red concrete-asbestos tile shingles. The raking eave is fmished with facia boards. Windows are set in multi-pane, steel casements of various sizes in 2 x 3, 2 x 4, 3 x 3, 3 x 4, and 4 x 4 configurations. The formal entrance on the south end of the building is distinguished by an inset porch. A side entrance on the east side is served by a concrete stoop and a gable roof with decorative brackets supported by wood columns. A basement entry on the north end of the building is served by a concrete stairwell and stairs.
Single or double concrete window wells are on all sides of the building. The structure is from north to south and from east to west, in total dimensions excluding window wells. A walkway of separated flat stones set into the ground is on the east side of the building. The interior ground floor is divided into a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen with breakfast nook, a bathroom with adjoining linen closet, and a closet adjacent the east side door. The formal or south entrance opens to a landing above a stairwell leading down to the basement level. The basement level is divided into three rooms along the west side, a bathroom and laboratory space in the southeast comer, and an office/storage room in the northeast comer.
The attic level is reached by a steep stairway from the southwest bedroom on the ground level; the attic is an undivided space beneath the sloping roof. A brick chimney rises from the basement floor near the center of the building and exits the roof near the roof peak. Walls of the ground floor and basement level are plaster or plasterboard on wood studs. Floors are finished with tile and carpeting, and ceilings are plaster. The building appears to be substantially unchanged from its original construction in except that the basement entrance on the north end appears to be a later alteration, and some curtain partitions and the bathroom in the basement may be additions made at unknown dates after original construction.
The building appears to have been built from a standard plan, but some original features differ substantially from that plan, including types DESERT NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE RESIDENCE HABS No. (Page 2) and materials of windows and the concrete-asbestos roof shingles (possibly replacement for original wood shingles). At the time of documentation in November all other buildings of the former refuge administration site and fish hatchery had been demolished, nearly all of the vegetation that once surrounded the residence had been removed, and the ground surface of the area around the residence had been highly disturbed.
Historical Context: The Desert National Wildlife Refuge Residence was probably constructed between and by the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, a precursor agency to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency obtained the tract of land in for the purpose of maintaining a fish hatchery. The exact date of construction of the residence building is not known, but a map of the site shows a residence in the location of the current structure. The map also shows two fish hatchery ponds to the east of the residence and a service building to the west of the residence. The facility became known as the Las Vegas Administrative Site of the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife and its successor agency, but the State of Nevada and the U.S.
Bureau of Land Management also constructed offices on portions of the original tract between and The current structure served as a residence until about when it was converted to use for offices and storage. The facility was abandoned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management in when a new office building was completed for those agencies at the north end of Las Vegas.
The Desert National Wildlife Refuge grew out of administrative consolidation of several wildlife refuge units in the and The Boulder Canyon National Wildlife Refuge was established in or to manage wildlife in areas that had been withdrawn by the Bureau of Reclamation for the Boulder Canyon Project, including lands around Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam that later became part of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area administered by the National Park Service. The Desert Game Range was established in in a remote area about 20 miles north of Las Vegas, to provide secure habitat for desert bighorn sheep and other desert wildlife. The Las Vegas Administrative Site served both refuge units from to when the fish hatchery was closed and refuge operations on Lake Mead ended.
The architectural context of the residence arose from a symbiosis of missions of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife. The Bureau of Reclamation began building dams and water diversion structures in the western states in but the era of construction of monumental dams for flood control and reclamation purposes began in the late Reservoirs behind dams of all sizes provided opportunities for conservation of wildlife species that were the dwindling in numbers, particularly migratory waterfowl, but dams on some streams also endangered natural reproduction of salmon and other fish.
Federal wildlife conservation efforts were led by the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife within the Department of the Interior, and this agency established hundreds of wildlife refuges throughout the nation during the and The two federal agencies often worked closely together at Bureau of Reclamation projects. The Bureau of Reclamation began providing housing for construction and operations personnel at its larger projects at least as early as when the agency began construction of Hoover Dam. Bureau of Reclamation engineers or architects in Denver designed a number of standard residence types for use at construction camps. Most of the standard residence designs were for modest two to four bedroom, wood frame houses with very little decorative detail.
In Bureau of Reclamation architect in Denver designed a series of four residence types for "Migratory Fish Control" in association with the Grand Coulee Dam portion of Columbia Basin Project in Washington State. This series of DESERT NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE RESIDENCE HABS No. (Page 3) structures was designated Type 101 through Type 104 and may have been specifically rendered for use by the Bureau of Sport Fish and Wildlife, because these type numbers do not correspond to type numbers for other Bureau of Reclamation residence designs. The current structure was built according to the Type 104 design, a reduced copy of which is included in photographs for this HABS documentation.
The rarity of surviving examples of building constructed according to this design is unknown, but it is possible that the design was used for residences at other wildlife refuges in western states. With very minor revisions, this design was re-issued by the Bureau of Reclamation in August as "Four Room Residence - Type The design may have been used at Bureau of Reclamation projects after
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