Virtual Guidebook to Las Vegas and Southern Nevada
Devils Hole
part of Death Valley National Park, Nye County Nevada

Devils Hole is a detached part of Death Valley National Park, set aside to protect the Devils Hole pupfish. This tiny fish has the smallest natural range of any vertebrate species, a small shelf just below the water line in this spring.

Development of local water resources in the 1970's threatened to drop the water level below the shelf and send the species to extinction. But legal action that went all the way to the Supreme Court asserted the species legal right to this habitat and set a precedent of immense importance in the conservation of rare and endangered species.