The Sand Springs Range is a short

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 ...

located in western

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, ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

within the Great Basin. It is approximately long and is in Churchill County. It separates Salt Wells (to the west) from Fairview Valley (to the east). To the north, it is separated from the Stillwater Range by Sand Springs Pass. To the south is Gabbs Valley. The Sand Springs Range was the site of Project Shoal, an underground

nuclear test Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, Nuclear weapon yield, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detona ...

conducted as part of the

Vela Uniform Vela Uniform was an element of Project Vela conducted jointly by the United States Department of Energy and the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Its purpose was to develop seismic methods for detecting underground nuclear testing, and it involved ...

program. ''Shoal'' was a 12

kiloton TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a ...

device which was detonated below ground on October 26, 1963. As the area experienced a series of large

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...

s in 1954,

seismic Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other ...

traces for the events could be compared to help differentiate future

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

underground nuclear tests from earthquakes. The site is unrestricted and unmarked. No surface crater was formed, and the casual observer will find little evidence that the event ever took place. The Sand Springs Range also has several large

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...

installations. These are associated with the bombing range in Fairview Valley, the

electronic warfare Electronic warfare (EW) is any action involving the use of the electromagnetic spectrum (EM spectrum) or directed energy to control the spectrum, attack an enemy, or impede enemy assaults. The purpose of electronic warfare is to deny the opponen ...

range in

Dixie Valley The Dixie Valley is an endorheic basin which had plentiful ground water (free-flowing artesian wells) around which ranches were built. Prior to the US Navy TOPGUN school moving from California to Nevada, the valley was purchased in 1995 for $10 ...

, and

Naval Air Station Fallon Naval Air Station Fallon or NAS Fallon is the United States Navy's premier air-to-air and air-to-ground training facility. It is located southeast of the city of Fallon, east of Reno in western Nevada. Since 1996, it has been home to the U.S. Na ...

. The most prominent peak in the Sand Springs Range is Big Kasock Mountain at an elevation of .

Notes

{{coord, 39, 06, 29, N, 118, 21, 00, W, region:US-NV_type:mountain_source:kolossus-dewiki, display=title Mountain ranges of Nevada Mountain ranges of the Great Basin Mountain ranges of Churchill County, Nevada American nuclear test sites Nuclear test sites