50 Fun Facts About Great Basin National Park

Great Basin National Park sits in eastern Nevada near the border with which neighbouring state?

It is about 290 miles north of the state's biggest city and is entered from the east side of the range.

In which year was Great Basin National Park established?

Congressman Harry Reid pushed the bill through; the park absorbed the much older Lehman Caves National Monument.

Which president proclaimed Lehman Caves National Monument in January 1922?

A highway association director from Tonopah and a Nevada senator had lobbied for the designation once Highway 50 brought motorists nearby.

What is the small gateway town at the park's entrance, home to the Great Basin visitor center?

It sits on State Route 487; the Lehman Caves visitor center is 5.5 miles up the road, half a mile inside the park.

The Great Basin is the largest area in North America of what kind of watershed?

Every drop of rain that falls in the region evaporates, sinks underground or ends in a salty lake, as the explorer who named the region first recognised.

Which explorer coined the name Great Basin after realising the region had no connection to the ocean?

He drew partly on information from the mountain man Joseph R. Walker as well as his own expeditions in the 1840s.

The Great Basin lies between the Sierra Nevada and which range to the east?

The region takes in most of Nevada and pieces of six other states plus Baja California.

How tall is Wheeler Peak, the park's summit?

It is the second-highest peak in its state but the tallest independent mountain, with 7,563 feet of prominence, the twelfth greatest in the lower 48.

Wheeler is only the second-highest point in its state; which summit on the California line is higher?

That summit is really a shoulder of Montgomery Peak across the border, with just 253 feet of prominence, so many consider Wheeler the state's true top.

Wheeler Peak takes its name from George Wheeler, who led what in the late 19th century?

An 1855 Army expedition had earlier named the mountain for Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War; that name later migrated to the neighbouring peak.

In 2019 Nevada's former Jeff Davis Peak was renamed Doso Doyabi, which means what in Shoshone?

The Nevada board approved the change in January and the federal Board on Geographic Names followed later that year.

Wheeler Peak Glacier holds what distinction within Nevada?

It is a small cirque glacier of about 120,000 square feet, much of it buried under rock debris, tucked below the peak's northeast-facing headwall.

Prometheus, the bristlecone cut down in the park in 1964, was at least how old by ring count?

Allowing for missing inner rings it was probably over 5,000, which made it the oldest known non-clonal organism at the time; the cutters did not know its record age.

Who was the graduate student who cut down the tree known as WPN-114 in 1964?

He was studying Little Ice Age climate with tree rings; accounts differ on whether a broken increment borer forced the chainsaw decision.

The tree code WPN-114 recorded that it was the 114th tree sampled in which Nevada county?

The name Prometheus, after the Titan who stole fire from the gods, had been given by naturalists who admired the grove in the late 1950s.

Great Basin bristlecone needles can stay green on the tree for roughly how long?

That is among the longest leaf persistence of any plant; the trees themselves are so gnarled that often only a strip of living bark links roots to a few branches.

In which year was the bristlecone designated one of Nevada's state trees?

It shares the honour with the single-leaf pinyon; the species grows in the high ranges of three western states.

Which bird's seed caches are thought to leave multi-trunked bristlecone pines?

Multi-trunk bristlecones are more common where the bird is present, which researchers take as evidence of its role.

Lehman Caves is about how long, making it the longest known cave in its state?

The park runs two guided tours through it, a 0.6-mile route lasting about 90 minutes and a 0.4-mile route lasting about an hour.

Lehman Caves stays at roughly what temperature year-round?

Humidity inside holds near 90 percent, which is why cave crickets, pseudoscorpions and springtails can live their whole lives there.

Lehman Caves holds more than 500 of which rare, round type of formation?

They grow as calcite plates on either side of a hairline crack; the Parachute is the most photographed example.

The Lehman Cave system began forming about 550 million years ago during which geological period?

The area lay under a warm shallow sea at the time; the caves later deepened during the Pleistocene as water flooded through the fractured rock.

Absalom Lehman, who first guided visitors into the caves in 1885, was what by trade?

About 800 people toured the cave before September of that year, most guided by Lehman himself, and wagonloads of formations were shown at the state fair in Reno.

Before settling in Nevada, Absalom Lehman struck it rich mining gold on which continent?

He found gold in his back yard there and ran wool stores, returning to California in 1861 after his first wife and a daughter died.

According to one local legend, who or what really discovered the caves that bear Absalom Lehman's name?

Over 40 differing accounts survive; another version credits his brother Ben, who felt a strong current of wind blowing from a hole in the ground.

Which Ely newspaper first announced the cave's discovery in April 1885?

It reported stalactites of extraordinary size and promised the explorers would return with sledgehammers to break into the next chamber.

Roughly how many people visit Great Basin National Park each year?

About 50,000 of them go underground on a Lehman Caves tour, making it one of the least crowded parks in the system.

What is the only fish native to Great Basin National Park?

It descends from fish that swam in Ice Age Lake Bonneville; other trout were stocked in the range's streams until the park was created.

The park's only native fish has been the official state fish of which state since 1997?

It replaced the rainbow trout; the fish fed both Native Americans and Mormon pioneers.

How many species of mammals live in the park and its neighbouring valleys?

They range from pygmy rabbits and kit foxes in the sagebrush to bighorn sheep, cougars and ermine on the mountain slopes.

How many species of amphibians have been positively identified in the park's Snake Range?

They are the western spadefoot toad and the leopard frog, in a park where every drop of water is precious.

Which bat, named for a naturalist, is among at least ten bat species found around the park?

Only insect-eating bats live in the Great Basin; chipmunks, mice and pack rats also use the cave but must leave to feed.

How many species of conifer grow in the park and its neighbouring valleys?

They run from single-leaf pinyon and Utah juniper near the visitor center up through white fir, Engelmann spruce and ponderosa to the treeline.

The Forgotten Winchester, found in the park in 2014, was discovered leaning against what?

Its stock was buried in four or five inches of soil, and less than two years later the Strawberry Fire burned the tree it had rested against.

In which year was the Forgotten Winchester rifle manufactured?

It was one of 25,000 Model 1873s made that year, chambered in .44-40 and often called the gun that won the West.

Which park archaeologist spotted the Forgotten Winchester on a survey above Strawberry Creek?

X-rays at a local hospital, under the patient name Rifle, later revealed a live cartridge hidden in the buttstock.

Great Basin was named a Gold Tier International Dark Sky Park in which year?

Astronomy rangers run programmes at an amphitheatre Thursday to Sunday all summer, and the park hosts an annual Astronomy Festival in September.

Dedicated in 2016, the Great Basin Observatory is the first of what kind in a US national park?

It sits at 6,825 feet with no significant man-made light for 70 miles in any direction and is operated remotely with four partner universities.

The NPS Night Sky Team found the lights of which city were visible from eight different national parks?

The team measured Great Basin's skies in 2004 and 2005 and rated them among the darkest in the country.

Osceola, the ghost town just west of the park, was a camp for mining what?

Discovered in 1872 and worked hydraulically with two long ditches, it peaked at 1,500 people before the water ran short in 1900.

US Route 6-50, which crosses the Snake Range at Sacramento Pass, carries what nickname?

The Snake Range runs about 60 miles north to south and holds four of the five highest peaks in the state.

Lexington Arch, in the park's southern section, spans roughly how far?

Like Lehman Caves it formed in the range's limestone rather than the sandstone typical of Utah's arches.

Roughly how big is Great Basin National Park?

With the adjoining Highland Ridge Wilderness it protects nearly 228 square miles of eastern Nevada's basin lands.

Which two small alpine lakes are among the park's listed scenic features?

Rhodes Cabin, the Lehman Orchard and Aqueduct and Lexington Arch round out the list.

The park's high peaks were carved into cirques, U-shaped valleys and moraines by what?

The park's summit is a horn, a peak sharpened on several sides by ice, and Prometheus grew on one of the moraines it left behind.

Which endemic plant, named for the park's summit, grows nowhere else?

Holmgren's buckwheat is another local endemic; over 800 plant species have been recorded in and around the park.

On the standard hiking-difficulty scale, what class is the Wheeler Peak Summit Trail?

It leaves from near the end of the scenic drive at about 10,160 feet, but altitude and afternoon storms make it a serious outing.

In 1912 the caves and Lehman's old homestead were folded into which national forest?

A sign warned visitors against destroying natural beauties, but there was no supervision until the monument came a decade later.

Which congressman's advocacy led to Great Basin becoming a national park in October 1986?

The area had been protected as Lehman Caves National Monument since Warren G. Harding's 1922 proclamation.

How many bird species have been recorded in Great Basin National Park and its neighbouring valleys?

They range from tundra swans and snow geese to greater roadrunners, alongside 61 mammal and 18 reptile species.