The Bullfrog Hills are a small

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 ...

of the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in ...

in southern

Nye County Nye County is a county in the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 51,591. Its county seat is Tonopah. At , Nye is Nevada's largest county by area and the third-largest county in the contiguous United States, behi ...

, southwestern

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the 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. N ...

. Bullfrog Hills was so named from a fancied resemblance of its ore to the color of a bullfrog.

Geography

To the range's east are Beatty, the

Amargosa River The Amargosa River is an intermittent waterway, 185 miles (298 km) long, in southern Nevada and eastern California in the United States. It drains a high desert region, the Amargosa Valley in the Amargosa Desert northwest of Las Vegas, int ...

, US Route 95, and the Bare Mountains. The

Amargosa Valley The Amargosa Valley is the valley through which the Amargosa River flows south, in Nye County, southwestern Nevada and Inyo County in the state of California. The south end is alternately called the "Amargosa River Valley'" or the "Tecopa Valley. ...

is on the southeast and on the south with Nevada State Route 374. To the southwest lies the

Amargosa Range The Amargosa Range is a mountain range in Inyo County, California and Nye County, Nevada. The range runs along most of the eastern side of California's Death Valley, separating it from Nevada's Amargosa Desert. The U-shaped Amargosa River flows ...

along the Nevada–California border.

Death Valley National Park Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka ...

and the

Grapevine Mountains The Grapevine Mountains are a mountain range located along the border of Inyo County, California and Nye County, Nevada in the United States. The mountain range is about long and lies in a northwest-southeasterly direction along the Nevada-Califor ...

are to the west.

Pahute Mesa Pahute Mesa or Paiute Mesa is one of four major nuclear test regions within the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). It occupies in the northwest corner of the NNSS in Nevada. The eastern section is known as Area 19 and the western section as ...

is to the north, beyond Sarcobatus Flat and US Route 95. The highpoint of the range is Sawtooth Mountain, at in elevation.Nevada Atlas & Gazetteer, DeLorme, c. 2010, p. 64-65. The hill's southern flanks are part of the

Amargosa Desert The Amargosa Desert is located in Nye County in western Nevada, United States, along the California–Nevada border, comprising the northeastern portion of the geographic Amargosa Valley, north of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. Th ...

, a sub-ecoregion of the Mojave Desert and

Great Basin Desert The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), 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, a ...

ecoregions.

Mining history

The historic

Rhyolite Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral ...

mining district and town was in the Bullfrog Hills. The

Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad was a former class II railroad that served eastern California and southwestern Nevada. The railroad was built mainly to haul borax from Francis Marion Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company mines located just eas ...

crossed the hills to its Rhyolite Station via the

Bullfrog Goldfield Railroad The Bullfrog Goldfield Railroad (BGRR) was a railroad lying just inside and about midway of the southwestern State line of Nevada. It was incorporated in 1905 to provide an outlet from the mining section near Beatty, Nevada, Beatty to the north ov ...

. The

Bullfrog ''Bullfrog'' is a common English language term to refer to large, aggressive frogs, regardless of species. Examples of bullfrogs include: Frog species America *Helmeted water toad (''Calyptocephalella gayi''), endemic to Chile *American bullfro ...

mining district was located along the south margin of the hills. The original Bullfrog Mine is located on the south flank of Bullfrog Mountain to the west of Rhyolite, and now just inside the northeast corner of the

Death Valley National Monument Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...

.''Beatty, Nevada–California,'' 30x60 Minute Topographic Quadrangle, USGS, 1986

References

External links

Mountain ranges of Nevada Amargosa Desert Mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert Mountain ranges of the Great Basin Mountain ranges of Nye County, Nevada {{NyeCountyNV-geo-stub

Geography

Mining history

See also

References

External links