LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Delivered on a horse-drawn wagon, the fruit from Kiel Ranch was one of the best things coming out of Southern Nevada. Over a hundred years later, the City of North Las Vegas is starting to replant the same crops.
Eddie Rodriguez, the first municipal forester for North Las Vegas, explained the history of Kiel Ranch is not all man-made while pointing at a nearby cottonwood tree.
“It’s one of the oldest trees here in the valley,” he said. “Some of these trees are being watered by the spring. Over to the right of us that has been here since even before that, the early 1800s.”
The history of Kiel Ranch can be told in many different ways: stolen bodies, divorces, and piles of dirt.
Rodriguez said the city has asked him to showcase the Kiel family’s chapter of the ranch, which was a time of growth—literally.
“One of the people named Kyle Conrad developed this into a ranch where he would take the spring and use it to grow a large orchard,” Rodriguez said. “It was that idea that gave us the thought, let’s bring back the orchard that was once here, that once worked and thrived in this valley.”
After the purchase of similar wagons used on the site from North Dakota, Rodriguez placed them around the ranch’s new chapter with the reintegration of the family’s orchard.
“This orchard is what we have brought back from the days early days of the 1850s to now, we have tried our best to replicate what was there in those days and gave it kind of a modern touch,” Rodriguez said.
However, one new obstacle will test the orchard. Whether the crops that flourished in the 1850s will survive the climate of 2025.
“It seems like spring keeps getting farther and farther out,” he said. “We keep we stay cooler for longer than hotter for longer, and it seems like things kind of keep moving away. So yes, it is looking different, and as it begins to change, so does the plant material and the trees and the shrubs and the type of things that we’re going to be using.”
The challenge doesn’t stall Rodriguez who said just like the Kiel family it might take a couple of attempts for something to crop up.
“It’s kind of a test run, I think, in the beginning, but we’re going to just keep working it,” he said. “Working all those planters, until we get it right.”
Kiel Ranch Park will be holding a grand opening for the orchard at 10 a.m. on April 30, according to city officials.
