Black Rock Desert

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Black Rock Desert

The Black Rock Desert is an arid region of lava beds and playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a silt playa 100 miles north of Reno that encompasses more than 300,000 acres of land and contains more than 120 miles of historic trails. It is in the northern Nevada section of the Great Basin with a lakebed that is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan.
The Black Rock Desert has numerous volcanic and geothermal features of the northwest Nevada volcanic region, including two Black Rock Points at the southern end of the Black Rock Range and which have dark Permian volcanic rocks similar to another Permian black diabase dike formation in Nevada.