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The Playa
Black Rock Desert
A desert is defined as an area with low precipitation (less than
10 inches/year) and high evaporation (due to high irradiation, wind
and temperature). The Great Basin in North America is considered
a cold desert because more than half of the annual precipitation
falls as snow and the average annual temperature is relatively low.
Located in Nevada, the Black Rock Desert is a 400 square mile,
thoroughly flat, prehistoric lake bed, completely devoid of any
vegetation or animal habitat. Its name comes from a large, prominent
dark rock formation located at the north end of the desert. During
the summer, the lake bed is primarily a hardpan alkaline playa.
During the winter, it becomes a temporary lake which flattens the
surface sediment and erases all footprints. This unique geological
feature is the reason Burning Man is held in the Black Rock Desert,
in Black Rock City.
For more information about the Black Rock Desert and its environs,
see the Bureau of Land Management home page at http://www.blm.gov/
and the Nevada BLM home page at http://www.nv.blm.gov.
Black Rock Country
Geologically, the Great Basin in North America is a fault block
formation: the crust of the earth between the Sierra and Rocky mountain
ranges is stretching from east to west, and is broken into blocks.
The faults dive into the earth at roughly 60 angles and the blocks
tilt forming the mountain ranges and low basins. Many valleys here
are at least 4,000 feet above sea level and all have internal drainage...
in other words, water does not flow out to the oceans. Black Rock
Country is a small portion of the Great Basin and encompasses the
Black Rock Desert, Hualapai Flat, Fly Hot Springs and surrounding
mountain ranges with names such as Granite, Calico, Black Rock and
Selenite.
The Black Rock Desert is a silt alkaline playa, 3,848 feet above
sea level, filled with silt as deep as 10,000 feet. Most of the
mountains have a north-south orientation with many peaks higher
than 10,000 feet above sea level. The Sierra range is now high enough
to cut off incoming Pacific rainfall, creating a desert from what
was once a wet, warm and lush landscape Crustal spreading has resulted
in the Earth's hot mantle being near enough to the surface to heat
ground water, creating the many hot springs.
70 million years ago, the Black Rock Desert was a valley that filled
with water during the Pleistocene ice age, becoming a segment of
the immense Lake Lahontan. At its greatest expanse, 13,800 years
ago, Lake Lahontan covered 8,665 square miles and reached a depth
of 885 feet at the site of today's Pyramid Lake. Imagine this ancient
sprawling lake with narrow arms, separating range after range in
western Nevada into long peninsulas and islands. Giant mammoth,
camel, horse and saber-toothed tiger roamed the marshy land. The
largest mammoth ever found in North America was discovered in a
channel of the Quinn River in Black Rock Desert. This Imperial Mammoth
was 50 years old about 17,000 years ago, weighed about 13,000 pounds
and was 13 high at the shoulders.
Despite its initial appearance, Black Rock Country is far from
being a wasteland. The dominant flora of the region are salt tolerant
sagebrushes, salt bushes, greasewood, shadesccale, rabbit brush,
bitterbrush and grasses. Just a few examples of the diverse fauna
consist of deer, bighorn and pronghorn sheep, mountain lions, coyotes,
jackrabbits, kangaroo rats, bats and numerous lizards, snakes (including
the rattler), spiders, scorpions, butterflies and many birds.
Plants and animals adapt to the harsh desert environment in unique
ways. Some plants reduce the size or number of leaves during the
dry season and others have waxy or gray colored leaves. Animals
harvest water by drinking dew and eating plants with high water
content. Some come out only at dawn, dusk or at night, burrowing
in a deep hole during the day. Hair and feathers create insulation
to help keep heat out and water in; light coloration reflects solar
radiation. Valuable lessons can be learned from the plants and animals
of the desert for our own survival in the hot, dry environment.
Humans are believed to have reached the Great Basin about 11,500
years ago, arriving via the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia. These
Asian Americans were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. Excavated Pyramid
Lake caves indicate that at least three different prehistoric human
cultures migrated through the basin between 9500 B.C. and 1400 A.D.
When the first European American explorers visited, the inhabitants
were the Kuyuidokado, or Northern Paiute, numbering 6,000-7,000.
Relationships between the Northern Paiutes and early white settlers
were until the late 1850's. Conflict between the two groups came
to a head in 1860 at the Battles of Pyramid Lake. Most of the Paiute
descendants are now on a reservation surrounding Pyramid Lake.
Black Rock Country remains sparsely populated today. Agricultural
activities produce garlic seed,onions, potatoes, pinto beans and
forage crops such as hay and alfalfa. Mining of gold, silver, oil,
opal and sulfur has been undertaken on a small scale. Gypsum mining
is a major industry; cattle and sheep ranching is a primary livelihood.
In the 1940s and 50s, the Black Rock Desert was used as a bombing
range by the military and live ammunition can still be found. Today
the desert basin is used for low altitude training runs. In 1997,
a British racing team set the world land speed record on the Black
Rock playa with a four-ton, jet-powered car named Thrust 2. The
principal recreational users of the desert today include rock hounds,
land sailors, history buffs, 4WD enthusiasts, amateur rocketeers,
and the community of Burning Man.
The location and nature of Burning Man creates within its participants,
a keen awareness of an individual's survival within the community
and within the natural environment. The lack of commercially-driven
consumption at this event provides everyone with an awareness of
resources and waste which is seldom found in contemporary society.
Since its first appearance on the Black Rock Desert in 1990, Burning
Man has had a remarkable record of cleanup. The Bureau of Land Management
has stated that it has been unable to identify the location of the
previous year's site.
Because of Burning Man, the Black Rock Desert is actually a much
cleaner place than it was before 1990. Over the years, our cleanup
crews have removed several tons of other people's discarded materials,
including car bodies, tires, sheet metal, bed frames, stoves and
refrigerators. Many truck loads of these items have been taken to
an approved landfill site outside of the Black Rock Basin. Burning
Man has also removed a sizable quantity of spent shell casings and
cartridges, which were deposited when the military used the area
for a gunnery range during WWII.
The community of Burning Man has a large base of active volunteers
involved with protecting the environment through out the year. Many
participants are also members of the National Wildlife Association
and the Sierra Club.
Originally written by: Catherine O'Riley
Edited by Inate
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