Ancient Lake Lahontan at Fallon, 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 Fallon, Nevada
Fallon lies at the center of Nevada’s Great Basin. Several thousand years ago, the city of Fallon was underneath about 500 ft. of water. In this image, the camera is positioned over Silver Springs, Nevada looking southwest. The present town of Lovelock and the Forty-Mile Desert are submerged on the far left. The Stillwater Mountain Range on the right was a large island with many smaller coastal islands surrounding it. The city of Fallon location is just above bottom to the left.
Today the hillside surrounding Fallon is largely treeless, with tree populations increasing with elevation. Studies conclude that the during the time period of Lahontan, pine trees extended to a much lower elevation than they do today. It is also thought that large Utah juniper and big sage were more plentiful. Lake Lahontan vegetation was more plentiful but still sagebrush dominates the region as it does today.
Two areas underwater in this image deserve a mention. The area known as the “Carson Sink” is in the distance to the left. Once Lahontan receded, the Carson River ended here in a large wetlands. In the late 1830’s, the explorer John Fremont, on one of his western expeditions, recorded what he found. He describes the Carson Sink area as a vast wetlands, filled with birds, grasses and bulrush. Today the wetlands are gone as most of the water from the Carson River is diverted for other uses.
The Forty-Mile Desert (to the far left) is infamous as one of the most perilous stretches of desert to cross during the California Gold Rush period. Wagon trains crossing Nevada had an important decision to make when approaching this area. The wagon trains could roughly follow the Humboldt River west once they passed the Ruby Mountains. The Humboldt River is a vital source of water for the wagon trains. Unfortunately, it dries out somewhere between the modern-day Cities of Winnemucca and Lovelock. One option was to go straight west and try for the Truckee River. The second option was to turn southeast and make for the Carson Sink and Carson River. Either way, it was at least 40 miles with no water source in between. Despite preparations made for this specific part of the journey and traveling at night, the Forty-Mile Desert was a dreaded and deadly stretch for animals and pioneers alike. Ironically, had those same pioneers crossed this same area a couple thousand years earlier, water would not have been the problem. Instead it would have been the mode of transportation.
In 2016 I received a grant from the Nevada Arts Council. The grant was given for the purpose of creating a series of images of of Ancient Lake Lahontan, of which this image is part.
Terrains in this scene have been replicated from Digital Elevation Maps made available by NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) flown aboard space shuttle Endeavour on February 11-22, 2000.
Digital Elevation Maps were made available by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. These data are distributed by the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), located at USGS/EROS, Sioux Falls, SD
