Big Bend Conservation Area is a partnership between the Nevada Division of Wildlife, Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Nevada Division of State Parks, and the LCR MSCP. The partnership began with the acquisition of a small 15-acre private in-holding within the Big Bend State Park. The in-holding, typically referred to as the Boy Scout Camp, was purchased by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which is returning the site to its natural state. The upland site combined with an adjacent backwater managed by the State of Nevada has collectively been identified as the Big Bend Conservation Area.

The dry upland area has been restored with native plants for education and outreach purposes. A hiking trail and interpretive exhibits have been already been installed. The backwater portion is being monitored by biologists for use by native fish and marsh birds. Past native fish monitoring efforts have indicated the presence of native fishes in and adjacent to the existing backwater. Successfully securing this site has resulted in the protection of 15 acres of backwater that benefits flannelmouth sucker, razorback sucker, and bonytail. This reach of the lower Colorado River maintains the only self-sustaining population of flannelmouth sucker and has very few undeveloped backwaters, which make protection of these existing backwaters a priority for the LCR MSCP.

Laughlin is an unincorporated resort town and census-designated place in Clark County, Nevada, United States. It is located on the Colorado River, directly across from the much larger Bullhead City, Arizona.

Hit the casinos, watch big-name entertainment and stay at a themed hotel. Las Vegas? No, but this small gambling town on the banks of the Colorado River offers a taste of Vegas minus the glitz, traffic and high costs. Plus, there’s much to do here besides gambling. Not only does Laughlin have the Colorado River for boating, swimming, fishing, waterskiing and other sports, but it also has gorgeous Lake Mohave offering much of the same on a grander scale.

Golfers will enjoy beautiful courses where reasonable green fees stretch their dollars. For a taste of the Wild West, head to nearby 100-year-old Oatman, where you can catch a mock gunfight and guzzle beer in an old-time saloon. Hiking, anyone? Grapevine Canyon awaits you, famous for the Indian markings – some 800 years old – carved into its boulders.

The Colorado River is one of the principal rivers in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The 1,450-mile-long river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states.

From its genesis on the Continental Divide in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, the river originally known as the Grand grows from a cold mountain trout stream into a classic Western waterway slicing through jagged gorges between sweeping, pastoral ranchlands on the upper leg of a 1,450-mile journey.

Its stature continues to swell as it carves through some of the planet’s most iconic landscapes—desert canyons, buttes, and mesas—before being bottled up and sucked dry by agriculture and municipal demand. Its once-mighty flow ends, in fact, several miles shy of the Gulf of California in Mexico.