The Big Smoky Valley is a landform of the Tonopah Basin between the Toiyabe and Toquima mountain ranges. It is about 100 miles (160 km) in length, and 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 usually refers to it as "Big Smoky Valley," but the chamber of commerce 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 gold mine at the southern end of the valley, and local industry includes mining, agriculture, and ranching. The valley traverses three counties: Esmeralda, Nye, and Lander. Average yearly precipitation in most of the valley is less than 10 inches. The North and South Twin Rivers flow into the Railroad Valley (the later at 1,951 m (6,401 ft) elevation, and it is completely diverted except during periods of high flow).
Famous quotes containing the words big, smoky and/or valley:
“A big family must be fun. I imagine it makes you feel you belong to something.”
—Barré Lyndon (1896–1972)
“O, he is as tedious
As a tired horse, a railing wife,
Worse than a smoky house.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The wide wonder of Broadway is disconsolate in the daytime; but gaudily glorious at night, with a milling crowd filling sidewalk and roadway, silent, going up, going down, between upstanding banks of brilliant lights, each building braided and embossed with glowing, many-coloured bulbs of man-rayed luminance. A glowing valley of the shadow of life. The strolling crowd went slowly by through the kinematically divine thoroughfare of New York.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)