Our Contribution to The Healing Garden Project in Downtown

On October 1, 2017, Las Vegas was changed forever with the senseless deaths of 58 guests at the Route 91 Harvest Festival Outdoor Concert.   Nearly 500 more were injured in the massacre.  A lone gunman had shot into the crowd across the Strip from a location within Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino.  Carnage and mass hysteria turned the southern part of our metropolitan area into a nightmare for victims, survivors, first responders, law enforcement, hospital staff and anyone nearby that threw themselves in to the fray to assist.  

A local landscape architect came up with the vision to erect a temporary meditative memorial garden to honor the victims, their families and everyone touched by the worst mass shooting in modern day history in the United States.  This temporary site on donated land from the City of Las Vegas became ground zero for a massive undertaking to create the garden in a manner of just a few days.  A space was designed to serve as a place to come and gather.  The garden would be a site to grieve, to mourn, to honor and to never forget the 58 lives that were taken. The garden was created from this grass roots effort nearly completely from volunteers with materials and labor donated from around the community and beyond.   It is remarkable is that it was created within a manner of just a week so that downtown First Friday attendees could come to the site and pay homage to the lives lost in this horrific incident.  It was this Friday evening, 5 nights after the shootings, that the first massive public painting event took place for the tile artwork needed to help outfit the garden.