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Lost City Museum

formerly called the Boulder Dam Park Museum

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ6683915 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Lost City Museum, formerly known as the Boulder Dam Park Museum, is located in Overton, Nevada and is one of seven museums managed by the Nevada Division of Museums and History, an agency of the Nevada Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs.

History

The Lost City Museum shares its location with an actual prehistoric site of the Ancestral Puebloans. The museum was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935 and was operated by the National Park Service to exhibit artifacts from the Pueblo Grande de Nevada archaeological sites, which were going to be partially covered by the waters of Lake Mead as a result of building the Hoover Dam.

In 1981, an extension of the museum was built, incorporating some ruins in order to protect them and share them with the public.

Description

The museum offers a reconstructed Puebloan house-site that is open to visitors. The museum has displays depicting the excavations of the sites, artifacts unearthed during the project, pictures of the historical excavations, an excavated pithouse and reconstructions of the Puebloan houses. Pottery, shells, jewelry and many other examples that showcase the history of the early inhabitants are on display at the museum.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Lost City Museum” as formerly called the Boulder Dam Park Museum. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lost, City and Museum.

Editorial reviewA valuable geographic starting point for tracing changing names, boundaries, uses and administrative responsibility. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1935, 1981—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1935-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Lost, City and Museum providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Lost City Museum”, the useful work is to connect “formerly called the Boulder Dam Park Museum” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6683915. VIAF identifies the subject as 144558966. The Library of Congress control number is no97056668. Authority coordinates are 36.532, -114.441. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935 and 1981.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lost City Museum”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lost City Museum primary sources, Lost City Museum archive and Lost research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lost City Museum”?
  2. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
  3. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Lost City Museum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.