History
More than ~15,000 years ago (15 tya), the Humboldt River flowed to the Smoke Creek-Black Rock Desert sub-basin, and during the recession of Lake Lahontan, the river diverted to the Carson Desert sub-basin. During the highest Lahontan water level (~12.7 tya), the lakebed was under about 500 ft (150 m) of water, under which sediment accumulated to form a flat lakebed.
Great Basin tribes inhabited the area 7.0 tya, and a Frémont Expedition encountered the site in 1843, but the Fortieth Parallel Survey (1867) conducted the first official exploration. In the late 1840s, Peter Lassen led California Trail emigrants through the desert's Applegate-Lassen Cutoff, an arduous route that took them hundreds of miles away from the gold lands of California. By 1910, Western Pacific's Feather River Route (Oakland-Salt Lake City) had been completed across the east side of the lakebed on the "general route first explored by Lieutenant E.G. Beckwith in 1854". By 1927, the desert had been used for filming The Winning of Barbara Worth (the 2003 Mythbusters pilot episode was also filmed in the area).
In World War II, 973 sq mi (2,520 km2) of the Black Rock Desert was used for a USAAF aerial gunnery training range, and post-war, the north region of the United States Navy's Lovelock Aerial Gunnery Range was in the Black Rock Desert area (the Black Rock Desert Gunnery Range had closed by 1964). In 1979, a fossilized Columbian Mammoth was found along the side of the lakebed.
The first "Balls" rocket event was held at the desert in 1993, and in 1998, the first annual Gerlach Dash glider race from Reno to the desert was held. For its 30th anniversary, the Black Rock Press published a 1994 book of desert photographs. The Friends of the Black Rock/High Rock organized in 1999, and a National Conservation Area Act the next year created several protected areas of the desert. Also in 2000, Lisa O'Shea died 7 days after being scalded in Double Hot Springs when she attempted to rescue 2 dogs, and the Bureau of Land Management subsequently fenced "Double Hot".
Read more about this topic: Black Rock Desert
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)