THE HISTORY OF NEVADA CHAPTER I. TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY. BY SAM P. DAVIS. Within the memory of persons yet living, a large area between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean was left undeliniated on the maps, being simply designated as the Great American Desert. On all sides of it the principle was quite fully, if not very accurately charted. The Spanish adventurers and missionaries had explored and rudely mapped the country to the west, south and southeast; the Lewis and Clarke expedition and trappers that to the east, north and northwest, but no one had penetrated that forbidding and mysterious desert region. Less was known of it than of Sahara of which it was believed to be the American counterpart. The rain of summer fell not on its breast Yet so swift was the course of events, that before they reached ripe manhood, the same schoolboys who puzzled over those crude maps, helped to unearth from that nameless, mysterious region, the treasure that practically saved the nation in its hour of peril, the hour when a great Republic, retreating to the last ditch and with its back to the wall, called upon the desert for succor. The noise of conflict was stilled, the swords were beaten into plow shares and the great unmapped section was converted into a flourishing commonwealth. From out of the very heart of that supposed American sahara has risen the State of Nevada, and the Great American Desert myth has shrunk, until now, the name applies only to a small district in the western part of Utah. Nevada lies on the western side of that big swale of the continent between the Sierras and the Wasatch mountains which Fremont happily named "The Great Basin," but apart from that general position and a slight point of contact with the Colorado river, it has no natural boundaries. Its limits were not fixed by mountain ranges, rivers or seas, but by Congress in bald terms of geodetic measurement. The act that organized it into a territory recommended that California cede to it her possessions on the eastern slope and establish the summit of the Sierras as the dividing line, but that State refused to make the cession and thus Nevada lost the opportunity of having at least one distinctly marked boundary. A slight compensation for this loss was the gift by Congress in 1866 of additional territory that carried with it a limited frontage on the Colorado river, the only natural frontage of which the State can boast. Concisely stated, the present boundary lines of Nevada are as follows: Beginning at a point in the middle of the Colorado river at the 35th parallel; thence in a straight northwesterly line to a point of intersection with the 39th parallel and the 43rd meridian from Washington, near the southern end of Lake Tahoe; thence north on said meridian to the 42nd parallel to the 37th meridian, and thence south on said meridian to the middle of the Colorado river; thence down the middle of the Colorado river to the point of beginning. Thus it will be seen that the State extends over seven degrees of latitude and six of longitude, but owing to the obliquity of its southwestern boundary, it presents square shoulders to only Utah, Idaho, Oregon and a part of California, descending on Arizona like a blunted wedge. Potentially Nevada is one of the great States of the Union, not only in area, but in the extent of its agricultural resources. Put Nevada on the Atlantic Coast and it would fill the space from Central Pennsylvania to Georgia, and from Delaware Bay to Ohio. MOUNTAINS. There are fully a hundred separate mountain ranges in Nevada beside detached peaks or buttes. Most of these ranges are short, few extending in an unbroken chain more than twenty miles, while the combined links of the largest do not exceed a hundred miles in length. This brevity, notwithstanding their number, averts any serious obstacles to communication between the different parts of the State, for where there are no passes through them, the longest can be skirted by a detour of a few miles. A remarkable parallelism characterizes these ranges which would give the whole surface of the State a fluted appearance if it could be seen from the proper altitude. The general trend of the mountains, is almost without exception, north and south, showing that they were elevated by the same lateral pressure, that uplifted the two great ranges between which they stand. While the general altitude is less than that of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, probably not averaging more than 7,000 feet above sea level, there are isolated peaks that shoot up in rivalry of those towering giants, as Pogonip Peak in the White Pine Range, 10,792 feet high, and certain peaks in Humboldt County estimated at 12,000 feet or more. The area of Nevada, which is approximately 120,000 square miles, classes it among the largest States in the Union, but so much of its surface is covered by mountains and deserts that many of the smaller States would outrank it in arable acreage. This is not an altogether regretable or irremediable misfortune. Its mountains do not possess the scenic attractions of which those of the eastern States can boast. Most of them are destitute of verdure and rise bald and brown from the plain, but in their rock-ribbed fastnesses are locked the treasure stores of precious metals that have enriched and will continue to enrich the world. On their lower slopes are found green pastures which feed thousands of browsing herds long after the native grass in California is withered by the sun. Even its deserts prove wonderfully fertile when irrigated, and of late years a great deal is being reclaimed under the Cary Act. Where the soil is hopelessly irreclaimable, depressions are found which yield fortunes in borax, soda, salt, sulphur nitrates and other valuable minerals in such quantities as to be practically inexhaustible, so that physical fea |
