The "Great Basin" that Great Basin National Park is named after extends from the Sierra Nevada Range in California to the Wasatch Range in Utah, and from southern Oregon to southern Nevada. This is an area where no water drains to an ocean, but drains inward.
This national park is home to ancient bristlecone pine trees, abundant wildlife, lakes and streams, and limestone caverns, including the stunning Lehman Caves.
The Great Basin Desert is the only "cold" desert in the country, where most precipitation falls in the form of snow.
The Great Basin is aptly named. Twice the size of Kansas, it stretches from the watersheds of the Columbia and Snake rivers south to that of the Colorado, and from the crests of the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades eastward to the Wasatch front. The Western explorer John Fremont coined its name in 1845.
Several distinct tribes have historically occupied the Great Basin; the modern descendents of these people are still here today. They are the Western Shoshone (a sub-group of the Shoshone), the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute (often divided into Northern, Southern, and Owens Valley), and the Washoe.
The Great Basin Desert is the largest desert area of North America. It is also the most northerly, covering most of Nevada (Ne), the western third of Utah (U) and parts of Idaho (Id) and Oregon (Or).
The peoples of the Great Basin were hunters and gatherers. Wild plant foods and small animals formed the bulk of their diet. Groups that lived near lakes fished and hunted water birds. In about the mid-1600s some groups gained access to horses.
Great Basin National Park is located in extremely remote, east-central Nevada, five miles west of the town of Baker.
The Grand Canyon is part of the Colorado River basin which has developed over the past 70 million years.
Major cities in the Great Basin include Reno, Carson City, and Salt Lake City. Boise lies just outside the Great Basin, in the Columbia River watershed.
Several river systems and lakes are in the Great Basin. Lake Tahoe, a vibrant freshwater Sierra Nevada lake, flows down the Truckee River, quickly loses elevation and drains into the salty sink of Pyramid Lake.
Great Basin. noun. a semiarid region of the western US, between the Wasatch and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, having no drainage to the ocean: includes Nevada, W Utah, and parts of E California, S Oregon, and Idaho.
Geologically, Death Valley forms part of the southwestern portion of the Great Basin. It is similar to other structural basins of the region but is unique in its depth. Portions of the great salt pan that forms part of the floor of the valley are the lowest land areas of the Americas.
The Mojave Desert is said to be the hottest desert in the United States and is in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It is located mostly in southern California and Nevada, although parts extend into Arizona and Utah.
The Mojave Desert, Las Vegas.
With a breadth of almost 50,000 square miles, the Mohave Desert is the smallest and driest desert in North America. Predominantly located in southern Nevada and southeastern California, the famous desert landscape is home to almost 2,000 unique plants plus the famous Joshua trees native only to the Mohave Desert.
The climate warmed significantly, drying up many lakes in the Great Basin, leaving behind only small remnants of what is now the Great Salt Lake in Utah and Pyramid Lake in Nevada. As glaciers melted, the water seeped into the gravel subsurface below, where it remained protected from evaporation.
The Basin and Range region is the product of geological forces stretching the earth's crust, creating many north–south trending mountain ranges.
The Great Basin is a region of the western United States where rivers and streams don't drain toward any ocean. Because it's mostly a desert, the primary escape for water is through evaporation. In fact, both Death Valley and the Salton Sea are hundreds of feet below sea level.
The Great Basin is home to the Washoe, speakers of a Hokan language, and a number of tribes speaking Numic languages (a division of the Uto-Aztecan language family). These include the Mono, Paiute, Bannock, Shoshone, Ute, and Gosiute.
The Great Basin includes parts of the states of Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. Notable features of the area include the cities of Salt Lake City, Utah, and Las Vegas, Nevada; Arches National Park in Utah; Great Basin National Park in Nevada; and the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
The climate of the Great Basin desert is characterized by extremes: hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters; frigid alpine ridges and warm, windy valleys; days over 90 °F (32 °C) followed by nights near 40 °F (4 °C).