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Western Nevada
Western Nevada (WNV) is a region and the northwestern portion of the U.S. state of Nevada that includes Reno, Carson City, Carson Valley and Virginia City. Lyon County and Churchill County are sometimes also referred to as part of Western Nevada. The region is the second most populous in the state (the first being Southern Nevada containing the Las Vegas Valley) with between 530,000 and 615,000 residents, depending on whether Lyon and Churchill counties are included. It is also the historic population center of Nevada, with the state capital in Carson City, the University of Nevada in Reno and several state historic parks, notably Mormon Station State Historic Park in Genoa, the state's first permanent European settlement. Geography Western Nevada encompasses the western edge of the state, with the term generally applied to areas within of the California border, from Mineral County northward. On the west along the California border, the Sierra Nevada mountains rise sharply from ...
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Reno, Nevada
Reno ( ) is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada-California border, about north from Lake Tahoe, known as "The Biggest Little City in the World". Known for its casino and tourism industry, Reno is the county seat and largest city of Washoe County and sits in the High Eastern Sierra foothills, in the Truckee River valley, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. The Reno metro area (along with the neighboring city Sparks) occupies a valley colloquially known as the Truckee Meadows which because of large-scale investments from Greater Seattle and San Francisco Bay Area companies such as Amazon, Tesla, Panasonic, Microsoft, Apple, and Google has become a new major technology center in the United States. The city is named after Civil War Union Major General Jesse L. Reno, who was killed in action during the American Civil War at the Battle of South Mountain, on Fox's Gap. Reno is part of the Reno–Sparks metropolitan area, the ...
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Great Basin
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic basin, endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California. 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 in Death Valley to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than away at the summit of Mount Whitney. The region spans several physical geography, physiographic divisions, biomes, ecoregions, and deserts. Definition The term "Great Basin" is applied to hydrography, hydrographic, ecology, biological, floristic province, floristic, physiographic, topography, topographic, and Ethnography, ethnographic geographic areas. The name was originally coined by John C. Frémont, who, based on information gleaned from Joseph R. Walker as well as his own travels, recognized the hydrographic nature o ...
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Washoe Lake
Washoe Lake ( Washo: c'óʔyaʔ dáʔaw) is a lake located near Carson City in the Washoe Valley of Washoe County, Nevada. It is a very shallow lake with a surface area that can vary greatly from year to year. Washoe Lake State Park sits on the lake's southeastern shore. Washoe Lake is a eutrophic, shallow lake between Reno and Carson City and just east of the much larger Lake Tahoe. The lake reaches a maximum depth of just . The shallowness and the high winds make the lake very turbid. Extensive droughts in the past have caused the lake to dry up entirely, most recently in 1992, 1994, and 2004. Washoe Lake is a warm water fishery and provides a habitat for non-native Sacramento perch, white bass, channel catfish, brown bullhead and carp. The lake has been stocked by the Nevada Division of Wildlife since 2004 when Washoe Lake last dried up. Two boat launches are on the eastern shore of the lake within Washoe Lake State Park. The lake provides habitat for a variety of birds. Th ...
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Pyramid Lake (Nevada)
Pyramid Lake is the geographic sink of the basin of the Truckee River, northeast of Reno, Nevada, United States. Pyramid Lake is the biggest remnant of ancient Lake Lahontan, the colossal inland sea that once covered most of Nevada. It is approximately 15 miles long and 11 miles wide, covering 112,000 acres entirely enclosed within the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Reservation. Pyramid Lake is fed by the Truckee River, which is mostly the outflow from Lake Tahoe. The Truckee River enters Pyramid Lake at its southern end. Pyramid Lake is an endorheic lake. It has no outlet, with water left only by evaporation, or sub-surface seepage. The lake has about 10% of the area of the Great Salt Lake, but it has about 25% more volume. The salinity is approximately 1/6 that of sea water. Although clear Lake Tahoe forms the headwaters that drain to Pyramid Lake, the Truckee River delivers more turbid waters to Pyramid Lake after traversing the steep Sierra terrain and collecting moderately hi ...
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Fernley, Nevada
Fernley is a city in Lyon County, Nevada, United States, and part of the Reno–Sparks metropolitan area CSA. The city was incorporated in 2001. The population of the city was 19,368 at the 2010 census. Fernley was home to the historic and one of the first Amazon.com centers in the world, which has since relocated within the metro area. Naval Air Station (TOPGUN), the U.S. Navy's Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center & TOPGUN training program since 1996, was moved nearby, to Fallon, from Naval Air Station Miramar. The city is home to the Reno-Fernley Raceway, Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 that produces battery packs and vehicle components nearby at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, and an under-construction lithium recycling plant by American Battery Technology Company. History Fernley, established in 1904, developed as primarily an agricultural and ranching community in proximity to Reno. It is unknown why the name "Fernley" was applied to this community. It, along with the defu ...
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Interstate 80
Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one of the original routes of the Interstate Highway System; its final segment was opened in 1986. The second-longest Interstate Highway in the United States after I-90, it runs through many major cities, including Oakland, Sacramento, Reno, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Des Moines, and Toledo and passes within of Chicago, Cleveland, and New York City. I-80 is the Interstate Highway that most closely approximates the route of the historic Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States. The highway roughly traces other historically significant travel routes in the Western United States: the Oregon Trail across Wyoming and Nebraska, the California Trail across most of Nevada and California, the first transcontinental airmail route, and ...
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Truckee Canyon
Truckee is an incorporated town in Nevada County, California, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 16,180, reflecting an increase of 2,316 from the 13,864 counted in the 2000 Census and having the 316th highest population in California and 2114th in the United States. Name Truckee's existence began in 1863 as Gray's Station, named for Joseph Gray's Roadhouse on the trans-Sierra wagon road. A blacksmith named Samuel S. Coburn was there almost from the beginning, and by 1866 the area was known as Coburn's Station. The Central Pacific Railroad selected Truckee as the name of its railroad station by August 1867, even though the tracks would not reach the station until a year later in 1868. It was renamed Truckee after a Paiute chief, whose assumed Paiute name was Tru-ki-zo. He was the father of Chief Winnemucca and grandfather of Sarah Winnemucca. The first Europeans who came to cross the Sierra Nevada encountered his tribe. The friendly chief rod ...
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Walker River
The Walker River is a river in west-central Nevada in the United States, approximately long. Fed principally by snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada of California, it drains an arid portion of the Great Basin southeast of Reno and flows into the endorheic basin of Walker Lake. The river is an important source of water for irrigation in its course through Nevada; water diversions have reduced its flow such that the level of Walker Lake has fallen between 1882 and 2010. The river was named for explorer Joseph Reddeford Walker, a mountain man and experienced scout who is known for establishing a segment of the California Trail. Course The Walker River is formed in southern Lyon County, south of Yerington, by the confluence of the East Walker and West Walker rivers. The West Walker River originates at Tower Lake in Mono County, California, above sea level in the Stanislaus National Forest. It flows north through a rugged canyon which provides the route for U.S. Route 395. It then em ...
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Carson River
The Carson River is a northwestern List of Nevada rivers, Nevada river that empties into the Carson Sink, an endorheic basin. The main stem of the river is long although the addition of the East Fork makes the total length , traversing five counties: Alpine County, California, Alpine County in California and Douglas County, Nevada, Douglas, Storey County, Nevada, Storey, Lyon County, Nevada, Lyon, and Churchill County, Nevada, Churchill Counties in Nevada, as well as the Consolidated Municipality of Carson City, Nevada. The river is named for Kit Carson, who guided John C. Frémont's expedition westward up the Carson Valley and across Carson Pass in winter, 1844. The river made the National Priorities List (NPL) on October 30, 1990 as the Carson River Mercury Superfund site (CRMS) due to investigations that showed trace amounts of Mercury (element), mercury in the wildlife and watershed sediments. History Archaeological findings place the eastern border for the prehistoric Mart ...
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Truckee River
The Truckee River is a river in the U.S. states of California and Nevada. The river flows northeasterly and is long.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed October 20, 2012 The Truckee is the sole outlet of Lake Tahoe and drains part of the high Sierra Nevada, emptying into Pyramid Lake in the Great Basin. Its waters are an important source of irrigation along its valley and adjacent valleys. Naming of the river When John C. Frémont and Kit Carson ascended the Truckee River on January 16, 1844, they called it the Salmon Trout River, after the huge Lahontan cutthroat trout (''Oncorhynchus clarki henshawi'') that ran up the river from Pyramid Lake to spawn. However, the river was ultimately named after a Paiute chief known as Truckee, who in 1844 guided an emigrant party from the headwaters of the Humboldt River to California via the Truckee River, Donner Lake, and Donner Pass. Appreciative of their Native Amer ...
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Rain Shadow
A rain shadow is an area of significantly reduced rainfall behind a mountainous region, on the side facing away from prevailing winds, known as its leeward side. Evaporated moisture from water bodies (such as oceans and large lakes) is carried by the prevailing onshore breezes towards the drier and hotter inland areas. When encountering elevated landforms, the moist air is driven upslope towards the peak, where it expands, cools, and its moisture condenses and starts to precipitate. If the landforms are tall and wide enough, most of the humidity will be lost to precipitation over the windward side (also known as the ''rainward'' side) before ever making it past the top. As the air descends the leeward side of the landforms, it is compressed and heated, producing foehn winds that ''absorb'' moisture downslope and cast a broad "shadow" of dry climate region behind the mountain crests. This climate typically takes the form of shrub–steppe, xeric shrublands or even deserts ...
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Pine Nut Mountains
The Pine Nut Mountains are a north–south mountain range in the Great Basin, in Douglas and Lyon counties of northwestern Nevada, United States. The highest mountain in the range is Mount Siegel at 9,456 ft (2,882 m). Geography The range starts in the north at the Virginia Range (famous for Virginia City and the Comstock Lode). They continue south for approximately 40 miles where they join with the Sierra Nevada near Topaz Lake and Leviathan Peak. They are bounded on the west by the Carson Valley and to the east by Mason Valley. Flora The Pine Nut Mountains take their name from the single-leaf pinyon pines that dominate the slopes between 5000 and 7000 ft. This is mixed with juniper to form the standard pinyon–juniper woodland plant community. Lower slopes are dominated by sage–juniper. Cultural The Pine Nut Mountains have been used throughout history by a number of groups for various purposes. The Washoe tribe used (and still uses) the vast quantities ...
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