Duckwater Valley is a

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between Hill, hills or Mountain, mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers ...

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 ...

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 ...

. It starts south of the northern border of Nye County, and runs south for a distance of approximately to

Railroad Valley Railroad Valley is one of the Central Nevada Desert Basins in the Tonopah Basin and is about long north-south and up to wide, with some southern areas running southwest to northeast. Description The southern end of the valley begins near Gra ...

. The Duckwater Valley is enclosed by the

Pancake Range The Pancake Range is located in east-central Nevada in the United States. The range extends as an irregular sinuous line for approximately with a roughly north-south trend (N 10 E) in Nye and White Pine counties.''Mt. Hamilton, Nevada'' 30x60 Qu ...

in the west and by the Duckwater Hills in the east. The Duckwater Creek crosses the valley. State Route 379 goes partially through the Duckwater Valley as well. The only populated place in the valley is Duckwater. Part of the valley is occupied by the

Duckwater Reservation The Duckwater Shoshone Tribe of the Duckwater Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of Western Shoshone, based in central Nevada in the high desert Railroad Valley, in northern Nye County. Their autonym is ''Tsaidüka'' in their Shoshoni la ...

History

The valley had been inhabited for a long time by Native Americans, when the first white Americans settled in the Duckwater Valley in the 1860s after silver ore was discovered in nearby

Hamilton Hamilton may refer to: People * Hamilton (name), a common British surname and occasional given name, usually of Scottish origin, including a list of persons with the surname ** The Duke of Hamilton, the premier peer of Scotland ** Lord Hamilt ...

. Agriculture arose in the valley, and for years hay,

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legum ...

, vegetables, and fruit were grown for the inhabitants of Hamilton. Isaak "Ike" Irwin, who produced hay, was in 1868 the first person to settle in the present-day village Duckwater. When Hamilton was in decline, farmers in the Duckwater Valley started focussing on hay and grain, that they fed to their cattle. According to the 1881 book ''History of Nevada'' by Thompson and West, the valley consisted almost entirely of meadows, of which was occupied by agricultural lands. That land was used for growing

and vegetables. Back then, some fruit plants had been planted recently. Thereafter, the livestock sector gradually grew in the Duckwater Valley, and it became the biggest in the valley. Around 1910, the farmers reduced the size of their cattle, because their

rangeland Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. Types of rangelands include tallgrass and shortgrass prairies, desert grasslands and shrublands, woodlands, savannas ...

s were damaged by flocks of wild sheep in the winter season. In 1913, the '' Ely Record'' said the Duckwater Valley was "one of the most extensive ranching and farming sections in Eastern Nevada." The newspaper wrote that there were a number of ranches, one of which with of land, of which were in cultivation. Those ranches grew hay, grain,

alfalfa Alfalfa () (''Medicago sativa''), also called lucerne, is a perennial flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is cultivated as an important forage crop in many countries around the world. It is used for grazing, hay, and silage, as w ...

, and potatoes, and were grazed by herds of cattle. The reservation of the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe, that is situated entirely in the Duckwater Valley, has a surface area of over , and was officially created in 1940. The idea to establish a reservation had first been raised in 1937 by employees of the Florio Ranch, of which the owner wasn't able to pay the mortgage after he lost all his sheep in a blizzard. They figured they could sell the ranch together with some other ranches to the government for an Indian reservation. After the idea received the support of the Shoshone, the

Bureau of Indian Affairs The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal agency within the Department of the Interior. It is responsible for implementing federal laws and policies related to American Indians and A ...

bought two ranches, and thus created the Indian reservation. At its creation, it had a size of , but the government has expanded it since by acquiring more ranch lands.

References

{{Reflist Valleys of Nye County, Nevada Valleys of Nevada