James Scrugham, M.R. Harrington and the ‘Lost City’ Project of Southern Nevada: Public Archaeology before and during the Great Depression
(University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
In 1924, the discovery of puebloan ruins in southern Nevada launched a seventeen-year effort to excavate what was to become popularly known as Nevada’s “Lost City.” Through the efforts of then-Governor James Scrugham and the renowned archaeologist and early SWAA member M.R. Harrington, what we would today call “public outreach” was, from the very beginning, a major component of the project. This outreach effort, which was initiated with the explicit goal of stimulating Nevada’s faltering economy, resulted in an astonishing amount of media attention. This paper reviews the history of this early public archaeology program, examines how and why the project was able to garner such widespread national and even international media attention, and considers how this early outreach effort might be relevant to the practice of archaeology today.