Some tourist attractions in the world just stand out and you don’t really need any directions to get there. Like the Statue of Liberty in New York – you’re going to see her standing there if you’re anywhere near the Hudson. The same can be said about Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas. If you look west of the Vegas Strip, you’ll see the high-standing red rocks.

Red Rock Canyon isn’t one canyon, but rather a series of large red rock formations that are located on a large National Conservation Area (NCA). These red rocks are protected by the Bureau of Land Management as part of the National Landscape Conservation System. Not that anyone would want to destroy the rocks, but they do need to be protected.

With over a million people visiting this site every year, the area could easily be damaged if folks decided that they wanted to chip away at the structure and take a piece home with them. The red sandstone isn’t exactly tough stuff, and it can easily be damaged.

The highest point in Red Rock Canyon’s large formation is La Madre Mountain (The Mother). It stands almost 2 and a half miles high at 8,154 feet and the surrounding walls are nearly 3,000 feet high. Hikers and rock climbers love Red Rock Canyon for the unique challenge it presents. Some of the formations rise straight up.

The large area was encircled by a one-way loop road to provide tourists with all the access they’d need to view the entire canyon. The road is 13-miles long and offers a few parking and rest areas along the way. The looped road is also a very popular destination for cyclists. Nearer the formations, mountain bikers also have something unique to visit.

If anyone wants to take a vehicle inside of the loop and drive around the canyon’s formations, it’s going to require an ATV or an off-road four-wheel-drive truck. A basic automobile isn’t going to be able to handle the terrain.

Red Rock Canyon isn’t only a popular tourist destination because of its red peaks and activity potential, but also because of the long history. Native Americans were calling this rock home way back in the year 900 and maybe even before then. You can still find pieces of pottery, fire pits and petroglyphs around the canyon.

Before the typical resort casinos become the desert’s oasis, Red Rock Canyon provided a natural livable habitat for the Native Americans. Plants, animals and water sources could be found all throughout the canyons, and this helped the people thrive for millennia.

Due to European settlers’ massive spread across the country, the Natives were all but extinct from the area by the 1900s. In 1967, the Bureau of Land Management stepped in and reserved 10,000 acres, and in 1990 Red Rock Canyon became a National Conservation Area.