The mountains in the McCullough Range lie mostly above the city of

Henderson Henderson may refer to: People *Henderson (surname), description of the surname, and a list of people with the surname *Clan Henderson, a Scottish clan Places Argentina *Henderson, Buenos Aires Australia *Henderson, Western Australia Canada * H ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the 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. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...

. The range has two distinct areas with the northern portion being primarily

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...

in origin, while the southern part of the range is primarily composed of

metamorphic rock Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock ( protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, caus ...

. McCullough Range was named after a pioneer settler.

Wilderness Areas

Some of the northern part of the range is designated as the North McCullough Wilderness by the US Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management while some of the southern part of the range is similarly designated as the South McCullough Wilderness. In addition the North McCullough Wilderness Area is within the newly designated

Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area is a National Conservation Area (NCA) administered by the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM). It includes the Sloan Petroglyph Site which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on ...

which allows further protection and enhancement.

McCullough Range geography

The McCullough Range is surrounded by three valleys. First, the

Las Vegas Valley The Las Vegas Valley is a major metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada, and the second largest in the Southwestern United States. The state's largest urban agglomeration, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area i ...

lies to the north; next, the north region of the Ivanpah Valley, with two major dry lakes borders the west; and to the east lies the

endorheic An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes ...

basin of the Eldorado Valley. The range specifically borders one mountain range at the south, being connected to the northeast higher elevation foothills of the

New York Mountains The New York Mountains are a small mountain range found in northeastern San Bernardino County in California, USA. The range's northeastern area lies in southeastern Nevada. The range lies just south of the small community of Ivanpah, and north ...

. Just northeast of the intersection of the two ranges, and in the southwest of Eldorado Valley lies the small Highland Range.

Natural history

Northern

In the northern portion of the McCullough Range elevation spans from at the eastern base of the range to at Black Mountain. The peaks are volcanic in origin, rounded to flat-topped, and have a steep eastern escarpment and a gradual western slope. The area supports a unique combination of plants from the Mojave and Sonoran deserts 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 ...

ecosystems. The primary vegetation is a

creosote bush ''Larrea tridentata'', called creosote bush and greasewood as a plant, chaparral as a medicinal herb, and ''gobernadora'' (Spanish for "governess") in Mexico, due to its ability to secure more water by inhibiting the growth of nearby plants. In S ...

community with

barrel cactus Barrel cacti are various members of the two genera ''Echinocactus'' and ''Ferocactus'', endemic to the deserts of Southwestern North America southward to north central Mexico. Some of the largest specimens are found in the Sonoran Desert in So ...

(''Ferocactus cylindraceus''), Joshua trees (''Yucca brevifolia''), various chollas (''Cylindropuntia'' spp.) and prickly pears (''Opuntia'' spp.). Unlike other mountain ranges in Clark County, the McCullough Range is volcanic in origin. Examples of lava flows, ash falls and glassy zones are clearly visible. The area supports native black gramma grass (''Bouteloua eriopoda''), which is not known to occur anywhere else in Nevada and stands of teddy bear cholla (''Cylindropuntia bigelovii''), which is the northernmost extent of the species. Remarkable petroglyph panels and other important cultural resource features occur within the wilderness area. Another peak northeast of Black Mountain is home to most of the radio and television transmission towers for the Las Vegas Valley.

Southern

The southern portion consists of a north–south mountain range that drops off gradually to numerous valleys, foothills and sloping bajadas on the east and west flanks. Elevations range from in the northwest portion of the area to at McCullough Mountain in the center of the wilderness. Most of the area is composed of metamorphosed Precambrian rock,

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

, and

schist Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock showing pronounced schistosity. This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a low-power hand lens, oriented in such a way that the rock is easily split into thin flakes ...

, although

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...

and

andesite Andesite () is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predo ...

flows occur in the northern reaches of the southern portion.

Creosote bush ''Larrea tridentata'', called creosote bush and greasewood as a plant, chaparral as a medicinal herb, and ''gobernadora'' (Spanish for "governess") in Mexico, due to its ability to secure more water by inhibiting the growth of nearby plants. In S ...

(''Larrea tridentata'') scrub occurs below ; Joshua trees,

Mojave yucca ''Yucca schidigera'', also known as the Mojave yucca or Spanish dagger, is a flowering plant native to the southwest deserts of North America. Description ''Yucca schidigera'' is a small evergreen tree growing to tall, with a dense crown of sp ...

(''Yucca schidigera''), and other cacti occur between ;

blackbrush ''Coleogyne ramosissima'' or blackbrush, is a low lying, dark grayish-green, aromatic,Turner, Raymond M. 1982. Great Basin desertscrub. In: Brown, David E., ed. Biotic communities of the American Southwest--United States and Mexico. Desert Plan ...

occurs between ; pinyon-juniper occurs above . Scattered

mesquite Mesquite is a common name for several plants in the genus '' Prosopis'', which contains over 40 species of small leguminous trees. They are native to dry areas in the Americas. They have extremely long roots to seek water from very far under gr ...

/catclaw communities also occur in washes throughout the area. Signs of prehistoric and

Pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

habitation have been found in the area, including rock art, occupation and settlement sites, and pinyon pine nut caches. This was part of the historic homeland of the

Mojave people Mohave or Mojave ( Mojave: 'Aha Makhav) are a Native American people indigenous to the Colorado River in the Mojave Desert. The Fort Mojave Indian Reservation includes territory within the borders of California, Arizona, and Nevada. The Colorado ...

. The

desert tortoise The desert tortoise (''Gopherus agassizii''), is a species of tortoise in the Family (biology), family Testudinidae. The species is native to the Mojave Desert, Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexic ...

, Nelson bighorn sheep,

Gambel's quail Gambel's quail (''Callipepla gambelii'') is a small ground-dwelling bird in the New World quail family. It inhabits the desert regions of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Texas, and Sonora; also New Mexico-border Chihuahu ...

and chukar are present.

References

This article incorporates public domain text from Bureau of Land Management sources listed above.

External links

The McCullough Range: information websiteVolcanic Centers of the Northern McCullough Range
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mccullough Range Mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert Mountain ranges of Nevada Mountain ranges of the Lower Colorado River Valley Eldorado Valley Ivanpah Valley Mountain ranges of Clark County, Nevada Protected areas of the Mojave Desert Bureau of Land Management areas in Nevada