North Fork Humboldt River
The North Fork of the Humboldt River is an 70 miles long tributary of the Humboldt River in northern Elko County, Nevada. The river has its headwaters on the north slopes of McAfee Peak in the Independence Mountains of northeastern Nevada, it exits the mountains and turns southward for 25 miles, joining its waters with numerous other streams. Making a sharp bend to the east, it flows through a small gorge called Devil's Gap, combines with Beaver Creek before resuming its southward course; the river with no more than a trickle of water left after its long journey through the dry hills of north-central Elko County flows into the main branch of the Humboldt River about 15 miles northeast of the city of Elko. The North Fork watershed is remote; some mining activity in the area took place in about 1870, followed by cattle ranching, sheep ranching in the 1890s. Problems of overgrazing and erosion in the Independence Mountains, which form the headwaters of the North Fork, prompted the federal government to establish the Independence Forest Reserve in 1906.
This reserve has since been incorporated into the Mountain City Ranger District of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest
Benjamin Bonneville
Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville was a French-born officer in the United States Army, fur trapper, explorer in the American West. He is noted for his expeditions to the Oregon Country and the Great Basin, in particular for blazing portions of the Oregon Trail. During his lifetime, Bonneville was made famous by an account of his explorations in the West written by Washington Irving. Benjamin was born in or near Paris, the son of the French publisher Nicholas Bonneville and his wife Marguerite Brazier; when he was seven, his family moved to the United States in 1803. Paine had lodged with the Bonnevilles in France and was godfather to Benjamin and his two brothers and Thomas. In his will, Paine left the bulk of his estate to Marguerite who had cared for him until he died in 1809; the inheritance included one hundred acres of his New Rochelle, New York farm where they had been living, so she could maintain and educate her sons. In 1813 the young Bonneville received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
He graduated after only two years, receiving a commission as brevet second lieutenant of light artillery. In his early career, he served at posts in New England, at Fort Smith in the Arkansas Territory. In 1824, he was promoted to Captain. While traveling to France, he was a guest of General Lafayette. After returning from France, he was transferred in 1828 to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. While in Missouri, Bonneville was inspired by the writing of Hall J. Kelley, as well as editorials in the St. Louis Enquirer to join in the exploration of the American West. Bonneville met with Kelley, impressed by him and appointed him to lead one of the expeditions to the Oregon Country; the lack of volunteers for the expedition forced the delay and eventual cancellation of the expedition, leaving Bonneville unrequited in his ambitions. To pursue his desire to explore the west, he petitioned General Alexander Macomb for a leave of absence from the military, arguing that he would be able to perform valuable reconnaissance among the Native Americans in the Oregon Country, which at the time was under a precarious joint occupation of the U.
S. and Britain. It was controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company. Macomb granted his request, a 26-month leave running from August 1831 to October 1833, instructed him to gather all information that might be useful to the government. In particular, he was to pose as a fur trader and find out the natural history of the region, its climates, geography, mineral production and the character of the local tribes. Expenses for his exploration were paid by private donors, including Astorian Alfred Seton and John Jacob Astor. Bonneville had a daughter with his wife. After his both first wife and daughter died, he did not remarry until after retiring from the military in 1866, when he settled in Fort Smith, Arkansas. There he married Sue Neis; the expedition that would be known as the most notable accomplishment of his life began in May 1832, when Bonneville left Missouri with 110 men, including Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth and field lieutenants Michael Cerre and Joseph Walker. The voyage was financed by a rival of the Hudson's Bay Company.
The expedition proceeded from Fort Osage on the Missouri River, up to the Platte River, across present-day Wyoming. They reached the Green River in August and built a fur trading post, which they named Fort Bonneville; the mountain men called it "Fort Nonsense" and it was never used for trading. In the spring of 1833, Bonneville explored along the Snake River in present-day Idaho, drifting into the head of the Salmon River and into Fort Nez Perce. During this trip he engaged a guide, John Enos, a 10-year-old Shoshone nephew of Gourd Rattler and Pahdasherwahundah, he sent a party of men under Joe Walker to explore the Great Salt Lake and to find an overland route to California. Walker discovered a route along the Humboldt River across present-day Nevada, as well as Walker Pass across the Sierra Nevada; the path became known as the California Trail, the primary route for the immigrants to the gold fields during the California Gold Rush. Much speculation has surrounded Bonneville's motivation for sending Walker to California.
Some historians have speculated that Bonneville was attempting to lay the groundwork for an eventual invasion of California part of Mexico, by the United States Army. John McLoughlin, the director of the Columbia operations of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, heard of Bonneville's mission, he forbade his traders from doing business with his men. Bonneville reported that many of the Native Americans he encountered in the Snake River were reluctant to displease the Hudson's Bay Company by trading with the Americans. In the summer of 1833, Bonneville ventured into the Wind River Range in present-day Wyoming to trade with the Shoshone. By this time, he realized, he wrote a lengthy letter to Gen. Macomb summarizing some of his findings and requesting more time to survey the Columbia River and parts of the Southwest before his return. After spending the early winter at Fort Bonneville, he set out westward in January 1834 with the goal of reaching the Willamette Valley.
He and his men traveled down the Snake River, through Hells Canyon, into the Wallowa Mountains, where they found a hospitable w
Palisade, Nevada
Palisade is located in Eureka County in the northeastern section of the state of Nevada, in the western United States. It is about 10 miles south of Carlin, about 33 miles southwest of Elko. Although now a virtual ghost town, it had a rich history following construction of the Transcontinental Railroad; the town takes its name from Palisade Canyon, an important obstacle to the construction and operation of the railroad, which lies to the west. The Palisade community was founded in 1868 as a station on the Central Pacific Railroad, it soon became the transportation hub for Mineral Hill, Hamilton Eureka and other eastern Nevada mining camps. A post office was established at Palisade in May 1870. After the Eureka and Palisade Railroad was established here in 1874, Palisade's population expanded. Houses and commercial stores were built and by the end of the 1870's, the town had multiple hotels, other businesses and residences. A school was built and the town had two churches; the local population reached 600.
Palisade was the site of an elaborate hoax during the early 1870s to boost tourism. Whenever a train arrived, the residents were said to stage rampant gunfights and bank robberies. Nobody was privy to knowledge of the hoax except the residents, the showmanship died off after several years. In reality, crime in Palisade was low and the town did not have a sheriff. By 1882, the town had telegraph office; the new station was used by both railroads. After 1885, the Eureka mines declined, as well as commercial train activity. With the decline of the railroad, the loss of jobs, people in town started to move away. In 1908, a third railroad began running thru town when the Western Pacific built its line to transport people and goods to northern Nevada. In 1910, flooding damaged all three railroad lines; the town never regained its success after the flooding of 1910. In 1932, according to legend, Palisade may have been the site of a possible assassination attempt on the life of President Herbert Hoover. Shortly before Hoover's train was to pass through the town, one railroad inspector said he encountered a vagrant by a trestle with 22 sticks of dynamite.
Two men skirmished with the inspector and fled, but another inspector disputed the story and said the vagrant did not have dynamite. The Palisade post office was discontinued in 1961. Since the 1920s, the town was owned by relatives of Atlanta businessman John Sexton, who sold the entire town at auction on April 26, 2005, in San Francisco; the town was sold to an unidentified bidder for $150,000. Sexton, who had not visited Palisade for some 35 years, said he sold the town to raise college tuition money for his daughter. Eureka County, NV website
Great Basin
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Oregon and Utah, portions of California and Wyoming, it is noted for both its arid climate and the basin and range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than 100 miles away at the summit of Mount Whitney. The region spans several physiographic divisions, biomes and deserts; the term "Great Basin" is applied to hydrographic, floristic, physiographic and ethnographic geographic areas. The name was coined by John C. Fremont, based on information gleaned from Joseph R. Walker as well as his own travels, recognized the hydrographic nature of the landform as "having no connection to the ocean"; the hydrographic definition is the most used, is the only one with a definitive border. The other definitions yield not only different geographical boundaries of "Great Basin" regions, but regional borders that vary from source to source.
The Great Basin Desert is defined by plant and animal communities, according to the National Park Service, its boundaries approximate the hydrographic Great Basin, but exclude the southern "panhandle". The Great Basin Floristic Province was defined by botanist Armen Takhtajan to extend well beyond the boundaries of the hydrographically defined Great Basin: it includes the Snake River Plain, the Colorado Plateau, the Uinta Basin, parts of Arizona north of the Mogollon Rim; the Great Basin physiographic section is a geographic division of the Basin and Range Province defined by Nevin Fenneman in 1931. The United States Geological Survey adapted Fenneman's scheme in their Physiographic division of the United States; the "section" is somewhat larger than the hydrographic definition. The Great Basin Culture Area or indigenous peoples of the Great Basin is a cultural classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas and a cultural region located between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.
The culture area covers 400,000 sq mi, or just less than twice the area of the hydrographic Great Basin. The hydrographic Great Basin is a 209,162-square-mile area. All precipitation in the region sinks underground or flows into lakes; as observed by Fremont, streams, or rivers find no outlet to either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean. The region is bounded by the Wasatch Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Ranges to the west, the Snake River Basin to the north; the south rim is less distinct. The Great Basin includes most of Nevada, half of Utah, substantial portions of Oregon and California and small areas of Idaho and Mexico; the term "Great Basin" is misleading. The Great Salt Lake, Pyramid Lake, the Humboldt Sink are a few of the "drains" in the Great Basin; the Salton Sink is another closed basin within the Great Basin. The Great Basin Divide separates the Great Basin from the watersheds draining to the Pacific Ocean; the southernmost portion of the Great Basin is the watershed area of the Laguna Salada.
The Great Basin's longest and largest river is the Bear River of 350 mi, the largest single watershed is the Humboldt River drainage of 17,000 sq mi. Most Great Basin precipitation is snow, the precipitation that neither evaporates nor is extracted for human use will sink into groundwater aquifers, while evaporation of collected water occurs from geographic sinks. Lake Tahoe, North America's largest alpine lake, is part of the Great Basin's central Lahontan subregion; the hydrographic Great Basin contains multiple deserts and ecoregions, each with its own distinctive set of flora and fauna. The ecological boundaries and divisions in the Great Basin are unclear; the Great Basin overlaps four different deserts: portions of the hot Mojave and Colorado Deserts to the south, the cold Great Basin and Oregon High Deserts in the north. The deserts can be distinguished by their plants: the Joshua tree and creosote bush occur in the hot deserts, while the cold deserts have neither; the cold deserts are higher than the hot, have their precipitation spread throughout the year.
The climate and flora of the Great Basin is dependent on elevation: as the elevation increases, the precipitation increases and temperature decreases. Because of this, forests occur at higher elevations. Utah juniper/single-leaf pinyon and mountain mahogany form open pinyon-juniper woodland on the slopes of most ranges. Stands of limber pine and Great Basin bristlecone pine can be found in some of the higher ranges. In riparian areas with dependable water cottonwoods and quaking aspen groves exist; because the forest ecosystem is distinct from a typical desert, some authorities, such as the World Wildlife Fund, separate the mountains of the Great Basin desert into their own ecoregion: the Great Basin montane forests. Many rare and endemic species occur in this ecoregion, because the individual mountain ranges are isolated from each other. During the last ice age, the Great Basin was wetter; as it dried during the Holocene, some species retreated to the higher isolated mountains and have high genetic diversity.
Other authorities divide the Great Basin depending on their own criteria. Armen Takhtajan defined the "Great Basin floristic province"; the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency divides the Great Basin into three ecoregions according to latitude: the Northern B
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the Western United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th most extensive, the 32nd most populous, but the 9th least densely populated of the U. S. states. Nearly three-quarters of Nevada's people live in Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area where three of the state's four largest incorporated cities are located. Nevada's capital, however, is Carson City. Nevada is known as the "Silver State" because of the importance of silver to its history and economy, it is known as the "Battle Born State", because it achieved statehood during the Civil War. Nevada is desert and semi-arid, much of it within the Great Basin. Areas south of the Great Basin are within the Mojave Desert, while Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada lie on the western edge. About 86% of the state's land is managed by various jurisdictions of the U. S. federal government, both civilian and military.
Before European contact, Native Americans of the Paiute and Washoe tribes inhabited the land, now Nevada. The first Europeans to explore the region were Spanish, they called the region Nevada because of the snow. The area formed part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, became part of Mexico when it gained independence in 1821; the United States annexed the area in 1848 after its victory in the Mexican–American War, it was incorporated as part of Utah Territory in 1850. The discovery of silver at the Comstock Lode in 1859 led to a population boom that became an impetus to the creation of Nevada Territory out of western Utah Territory in 1861. Nevada became the 36th state on October 31, 1864, as the second of two states added to the Union during the Civil War. Nevada has a reputation for its libertarian laws. In 1940, with a population of just over 110,000 people, Nevada was by far the least-populated state, with less than half the population of the next least-populated state. However, legalized gambling and lenient marriage and divorce laws transformed Nevada into a major tourist destination in the 20th century.
Nevada is the only U. S. state where prostitution is legal, though it is illegal in Clark County, Washoe County and Carson City. The tourism industry remains Nevada's largest employer, with mining continuing as a substantial sector of the economy: Nevada is the fourth-largest producer of gold in the world; the name "Nevada" comes from meaning "snow-covered", after the Sierra Nevada. Most Nevadans pronounce the second syllable of their state name using the TRAP vowel. Many from outside the Western United States pronounce it with the PALM vowel. Although the latter pronunciation is closer to the Spanish pronunciation, it is not the pronunciation preferred by most Nevadans. State Assemblyman Harry Mortenson proposed a bill to recognize the alternate pronunciation of Nevada, though the bill was not supported by most legislators and never received a vote; the Nevadan pronunciation is the de facto official one, since it is the one used by the state legislature. At one time, the state's official tourism organization, TravelNevada, stylized the name of the state as "Nevăda", with a breve mark over the a indicating the locally preferred pronunciation, available as a license plate design.
Nevada is entirely within the Basin and Range Province, is broken up by many north-south mountain ranges. Most of these ranges have endorheic valleys between them, which belies the image portrayed by the term Great Basin. Much of the northern part of the state is within the Great Basin, a mild desert that experiences hot temperatures in the summer and cold temperatures in the winter. Moisture from the Arizona Monsoon will cause summer thunderstorms; the state's highest recorded temperature was 125 °F in Laughlin on June 29, 1994. The coldest recorded temperature was −52 °F set in San Jacinto in 1972, in the northeastern portion of the state; the Humboldt River crosses the state from east to west across the northern part of the state, draining into the Humboldt Sink near Lovelock. Several rivers drain from the Sierra Nevada eastward, including the Walker and Carson rivers. All of these rivers are endorheic basins, ending in Walker Lake, Pyramid Lake, the Carson Sink, respectively. However, not all of Nevada is within the Great Basin.
Tributaries of the Snake River drain the far north, while the Colorado River, which forms much of the boundary with Arizona, drains much of southern Nevada. The mountain ranges, some of which have peaks above 13,000 feet, harbor lush forests high above desert plains, creating sky islands for endemic species; the valleys are no lower in elevation than 3,000 feet, while some in central Nevada are above 6,000 feet. The southern third of the state, where the Las Vegas area is situated, is within the Mojave Desert; the area is closer to the Arizona Monsoon in the summer. The terrain is lower below 4,000 feet, creating conditions for hot summer days and cool to chilly winter nights. Nevada and California have by far the longest diagonal line as a state boundary at just over 400 miles; this line begins in Lake Tahoe nearly
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
California Trail
The California Trail was an emigrant trail of about 3,000 mi across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of California. After it was established, the first half of the California Trail followed the same corridor of networked river valley trails as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, namely the valleys of the Platte, North Platte and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming. In the present states of Wyoming and Utah, the California and Oregon trails split into several different trails or cutoffs. By 1847, two former fur trading frontier forts marked trailheads for major alternative routes through Utah and Wyoming to Northern California; the first was Jim Bridger's Fort Bridger in present-day Wyoming on the Green River, where the Mormon Trail turned southwest over the Wasatch Range to the newly established Salt Lake City, Utah. From Salt Lake the Salt Lake Cutoff went north and west of the Great Salt Lake and rejoined the California Trail in the City of Rocks in present-day Idaho.
The main Oregon and California Trails crossed the Green River on several different ferries and trails that led to or bypassed Fort Bridger and crossed over a range of hills to the Great Basin drainage of the Bear River. Just past present-day Soda Springs, both trails turned northwest, following the Portneuf River valley to the British Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Hall on the Snake River in present-day Idaho. From Fort Hall the Oregon and California trails went about 50 miles southwest along the Snake River Valley to another "parting of the ways" trail junction at the junction of the Raft and Snake rivers; the California Trail from the junction followed the Raft River to the City of Rocks in Idaho near the present Nevada-Idaho-Utah tripoint. The Salt Lake and Fort Hall routes were about the same length: about 190 miles. From the City of Rocks the trail went into the present state of Utah following the South Fork of the Junction Creek. From there the trail followed along a series of small streams, such as Thousand Springs Creek in the present state of Nevada until approaching present-day Wells, where they met the Humboldt River.
By following the crooked, meandering Humboldt River Valley west across the arid Great Basin, emigrants were able to get the water and wood they needed for themselves and their teams. The water turned alkaline as they progressed down the Humboldt, there were no trees. "Firewood" consisted of broken brush, the grass was sparse and dried out. Few travelers liked the Humboldt River Valley passage. Humboldt is not good for man nor beast... and there is not timber enough in three hundred miles of its desolate valley to make a snuff-box, or sufficient vegetation along its banks to shade a rabbit, while its waters contain the alkali to make soap for a nation. At the end of the Humboldt River, where it disappeared into the alkaline Humboldt Sink, travelers had to cross the deadly Forty Mile Desert before finding either the Truckee River or Carson River in the Carson Range and Sierra Nevada mountains that were the last major obstacles before entering Northern California. An alternative route across the present states of Utah and Nevada that bypassed both Fort Hall and the Humboldt River trails was developed in 1859.
This route, the Central Overland Route, about 280 miles shorter and more than 10 days quicker, went south of the Great Salt Lake and across the middle of present-day Utah and Nevada through a series of springs and small streams. The route went south from Salt Lake City across the Jordan River to Fairfield, Utah west-southwest past Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, Utah, Utah, to Ely, Nevada across Nevada to Carson City, Nevada. In addition to immigrants and migrants from the East, after 1859 the Pony Express, Overland stages and the First Transcontinental Telegraph all followed this route with minor deviations. Once in western Nevada and eastern California, the pioneers worked out several paths over the rugged Carson Range and Sierra Nevada mountains into the gold fields and cities of northern California; the main routes were the Truckee Trail to the Sacramento Valley and after about 1849 the Carson Trail route to the American River and the Placerville, California gold digging region.
Starting about 1859 the Johnson Cutoff and the Henness Pass Route across the Sierras were improved and developed. These main roads across the Sierras were both toll roads so there were funds to pay for maintenance and upkeep on the roads; these toll roads were used to carry cargo west to east from California to Nevada, as thousands of tons of supplies were needed by the gold and silver miners, etc. working on the Comstock Lode near the present Virginia City, Nevada. The Johnson Cutoff, from Placerville to Carson City along today's U. S. Route 50 in California, was used by the Pony Express year-round and in the summer by the stage lines, it was the only overland route from the East to California that could be kept open for at least horse traffic in the winter. The California Trail was used from 1845 until several years after the end of the American Civil War. After about 1848 the most popular route was the Carson Route which, while rugged, was still easier than most others and entered California in the middle of the gold fields.
The trail was heav
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