Discover Both Sides of the Great Basin

"The Great Basin is a unifying force; wherever you live in it you flow toward every other part." -- Wallace Stegner in "Walter Clark's Frontier"

High Desert

The Hart Mountain and Sheldon National Wildlife Refuges are now the largest ungrazed grasslands in the United States. Cattle have been kicked off the refuges so that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can conduct a huge experiment in restoring grasslands with fire. Oregon environmentalists would like to establish a national park at Steens Mountain and exclude cattle from most of the high desert steppes. To the south, thousands of visitors are flocking to the austere playa of the Black Rock Desert, raising the spectre that perhaps even the most uninviting landscapes are in danger of being loved to death.

The rivers that flow out of the Sierra Nevada and once created the great Lake Lahontan during the Pleistocene, have been used and abused for the worst part of a century and more. This year, the Truckee, Carson and Walker Rivers look like they could make a comeback. The rivers are enjoying good floods for the second year in a row. Mono Lake and Pyramid Lake have started on the road to recovery. But unless farmers, ranchers, urbanites, and the states and federal government can work out a new course, Walker Lake remains in peril.

Nuclear testing has ended, leaving hundreds of unlicensed nuclear waste sites underground. Nevadans are more determined than ever to keep nuclear waste out of Yucca Mountain, which is right next door. A nearby low-level radioactive waste dump in Beatty is closed and slowly leaking. Meanwhile, Nevada governor Bob Miller is urging tourists to travel the not-so-lonely "Extraterrestrial Highway" that runs through the UFO-addled town of Rachel on the eastern edge of the test site downwind of the once secret Groom Lake Air Force Base.

The backyard of Los Angeles, the Mojave Desert has been in a pressure cooker for a long time. Military bases, chemical and nuclear dumps, mines, off-road tracks, palmy resorts, and Indian casinos crowd the edges of the new Mojave Desert National Preserve, which had to beg money from Death Valley National Park after Congress refused to give it more than $1 to operate this year.

The Humboldt River was the highway of the West for wagon trains on their way to California. I-80 runs along this route, which some decry as the worst way to see the Great Basin. In fact, the interstate takes you directly from one ventricle in the heart of the Great Basin, the Great Salt Lake, to the other, the Humboldt Sink. Along the way, you pass through the biggest gold boom in the history of the United States. The mines suck up groundwater to keep their pits dry. So right now, the Humboldt River is full and wetlands are growing on once dry ground. But no one knows for sure what will happen to the Humboldt Basin when the pumps stop and the pits fill in with groundwater and become giant dead lakes.

Utahns laugh when visitors go to the Great Salt Lake. Just follow your nose to the beach. Everybody knows you can't sink in the briny lake. But unless you're something other than an ordinary mortal, you can't walk on the water either. To experience the sensation of floating effortlessly on top of the inland sea, you'll have to wade through yards of putrid brine flies. Then flop down in the smelly shallow water. Look Mom! No hands. Are you sure this is the place?

The national park at the heart of the Great Basin was created in no small measure to improve the image of the region. The park was born compromised. It encompasses a range but not a complementary basin. But climb Wheeler Peak and look out over the basins and ranges stretching as far as you can see in every direction and you will feel, for a moment, that you can embrace the whole of the Great Basin. Then, of course, you must come back down to earth and find your way home.