Ancient Lake Lahontan at Dayton, Nevada

Northern Nevada was once a high elevation, island archipelago.

In the centuries following Noah’s flood an ice age ensued. That ice age lasted hundreds of years. When the ice age began to recede, weather patterns changed and hundreds of lakes developed in the western United States. Paleo wind studies show that long ago, Nevada regularly received moist air directly from the Gulf of Mexico. This moist air deposited a colossal amount of rain and snow which exceeded the evaporation rate, thus creating ponds and lakes. The lakes created by this weather pattern left behind sandy shorelines that we can still go see and touch today. This is an image of one of the largest lakes based upon geological studies of the shoreline evidence.

Surprisingly, the arid desert areas where Nevadan’s live and work today were once covered with water. A huge donut-shaped lake dominated northern Nevada. The lake is called Ancient Lake Lahontan. In this rendering I have restored the water level in relation to the surrounding terrain back to the highest level it had attained. You are seeing how Nevada likely looked thousands of years ago, in photographic quality!

Ancient Lake Lahontan at Dayton, Nevada

About 4,000 years ago give or take, ancient Lake Lahontan was at its highest lake level of 4,389 feet. For the city of Dayton, Nevada and Dayton Valley this was a period of submersion under Lake Lahontan. The water level in the Dayton area was relatively shallow, in the range of 5 to 15 feet. The Carson River emptied into Lake Lahontan here in this scene which is just east of modern downtown Dayton.

Back then, the Carson River transported huge volumes of fresh water from the Sierra Mountains. The water was a combination of rain, springs and snowmelt, but also the runoff of very large receding glaciers in the Sierra Range.

In this scene, the perspective of the render is located near the intersection of Dayton Valley Road and Sutro Road. This image captures the south side of Dayton Valley. The central section of the Pinenut Mountain Range is visible, particularly Rawe Peak at 8,238 ft.

The famous author Samuel Clemens travelled through the Nevada territory from 1861 to 1864. It was here that he first coined his pen name of “Mark Twain.” He mentioned northern Nevada by saying “the area reminds one of a singed cat, even the birds overhead appear to carry their own provisions.” Unbeknownst to Mark Twain, he was looking at a long ago dried up and dusty lake bed. We can appreciate why he said what he said. But what might he have written if he could see this rendering and see northern Nevada as it once was?