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Introduction
Nevada,
the driest state in the nation, was considerably wetter
10,000 years ago and much of the land was covered with
ancient lakes. The largest of these was the ancient Lake
Lahontan in northwestern Nevada. Today, only Pyramid Lake
and Walker lake in west-central nevada provide an indication
of the prior existence of Lake Lahonton and this glacial
epoch period.
The lofty peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains, streching
along much of Nevada's western border, would interrupt the
prevailing easterly flow of the storm systems and the state
access to natual precipitation from the moisture-laden storm
front fronts coming in off the Pacific Coast. The resultant
"rain shadow" rapidly dried up the land. Over much of Nevada
a massive elevated bowl formed, an area we now call the
Great Basin. From within this expanse, no surface waters
flow outward to the sea.
The only readily available surface waters entering this huge
depression are the seasonal rivers fed by melting snow and
flowing from the mountain ranges along Nevada's western
frontier and out of a range of lofty peaks in north-central
Nevada called the Ruby Mountains. the resultant Nevada,
flowin out of the Ruby, Jarbidge, Independence, and East
Humboldt Mountain ranges and running approximately 265 miles
mostly westward towards the Humboldt Sink, and the Truckee,
Carson and Walker rivers which flow eastward out of the
Sierra Nevada Mountains in the west.
These river systems would become crucial to the future
development of Northern Nevada. The Truckee River, from its
uppermost headwaters in the Sierra Nevada Mountains above
Lake Tahoe and draining the Lake Tahoe Basin, courses its
way over 140 miles to its terminus at Pyramid Lake. The
Carson River drains an area soa)uth of Lake Tahoe and flows
over 180 miles to the Carson Sink ( Playa ) and provides
waters to important wetland habitat in that area. The Walker
River drains an area in the Sierra Nevada Mountains
southeast of Lake Tahoe and flows almost 160 miles to its
terminus at Walker Lake. Eventually, all these river
terminus locations have become stressed and natural habitat
and animal species threatened, as ever greater human demands
are placed on the available flows.
(Truckee
River Chronology)
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