4 Best Sights in Southeast Nevada, Nevada

Now located in Bullhead City Community Park, the Colorado River Museum displays the rich past of the tristate region where Nevada, Arizona, and California converge. Earnest volunteers guide you through the haphazard array of artifacts from the Mojave tribe and the gold rush era in nearby Oatman. There are also exhibits on the building of Davis Dam, 18th-century explorer Father Francisco Garcés, and the experimental use of camels in the area by a pre–Civil War U.S. Army.

The Moapa Valley has one of the finest collections of ancestral Puebloan artifacts in the American Southwest. Lost City, officially known as Pueblo Grande de Nevada, was a major outpost of the ancient culture. The museum's artifacts include baskets, weapons, a restored Basketmaker pit house, reconstructed pueblo houses, and black-and-white photographs of the excavation of Lost City in the 1920s and '30s. To get to the Lost City Museum from Valley of Fire, pass the park's east entrance and head north onto Northshore Drive, which becomes state route 169, toward Overton.

The museum pavilion is open daily and features early-20th-century locomotives to check out as well as an elaborate indoor model train exhibit. You can ride the rails aboard the Nevada Southern Railway excursion train, which departs Nevada State Railroad Museum four times a day on weekends for a scenic 35-minute ride through the desert landscape surrounding Boulder City. Some train cars are open-air, allowing you to feel the breeze as you take in the countryside views.

Searchlight was once the biggest boomtown in southern Nevada, and some of its rich mining and railroad history is now compressed into a one-room museum inside the local community center. Visitors will find an assayer's office, outdoor mining display, and exhibits devoted to notables with ties to the area, including silent-screen star Clara Bow and early aviation heroes such as record-breaking test pilot John Macready.