The Big Smoky Valley is a landform of the

Tonopah Basin The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basin ...

between the Toiyabe and Toquima

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

s. It is about 100 miles (160 km) in length. Big Smoky Valley was so named on account of haze which frequently settles there. It is known by other names (some with different spellings): including Great Smoky Valley, Smokey Valley, Smoky Valley, Wen-A-No-Nu-Fee Valley, and Won-A-No-Nu-Fee Valley. The

U.S. Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and ...

usually refers to it as "Big Smoky Valley," but the

chamber of commerce A chamber of commerce, or board of trade, is a form of business network. For example, a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to ad ...

in the valley calls itself the ''Greater Smoky Valley Chamber of Commerce''. Approximately 2,500 people live in the valley, which has seven small communities. There is an

open-pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock (geology), rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a Borrow pit, b ...

gold mine Gold Mine may refer to: *Gold Mine (board game) *Gold Mine (Long Beach), an arena *"Gold Mine", a song by Joyner Lucas from the 2020 album '' ADHD'' See also * ''Gold'' (1974 film), based on the novel ''Gold Mine'' by Wilbur Smith *Gold mining ...

at the southern end of the valley, and local industry includes

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

, and

ranching A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most often ...

. The valley traverses three counties: Esmeralda, Nye, and Lander. Average yearly precipitation in most of the valley is less than . The North and South Twin Rivers flow into the Big Smoky Valley—the latter at an elevation of —and the water is completely diverted except during periods of high flow.

References

External links

Photographs of the Big Smoky Valley
Valleys of Nevada Valleys of Nye County, Nevada Valleys of Esmeralda County, Nevada Landforms of Lander County, Nevada {{NyeCountyNV-geo-stub