Ancient Lake Lahontan at Virginia City, 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 Virginia City, Nevada
Virginia City, Nevada is located high atop the Flowery Range, northwest of Carson City, Nevada at 6,150 feet elevation. When Ancient Lake Lahontan was at its highest elevation, the Virginia City area was never in danger of being submerged. What was different back then was the type and density of foliage. Everything that grows today in northern Nevada grew more abundantly during the period of Lake Lahontan and at lower elevations. Whitebark Pine, a stocky contorted pine that seems to love exposure, found today only at higher elevations, was more prevalent at lower elevations. The increased amount of rainfall during this period made everything much greener. The smell of sagebrush in the air after rain is very powerful today; I can only imagine what it must have been like back then.
This image shows the location of where three very significant Nevada mining towns will be located; Virginia City, Gold Hill and Silver City. These three towns would become the epicenter of the great silver discovery called the “Comstock Lode.” Underneath that green exterior lies immense fortunes of gold and silver. An excerpt from Wikipedia “Comstock Lode”: “The total product of ore extracted and milled in the Comstock District, 1859 to 1880, was 6,971,641 tons. Peak production from the Comstock occurred in 1877, with the mines producing over $14 million worth of gold and $21 million worth of silver that year (about $311 million and $467 million today).” Total production from the mines in this image from 1859-1878 was $320 million.
In addition to the valuable gold and silver ore in the area, were the gorgeous views. Virginia City today has beautiful views to the east overlooking Dayton, NV and Stagecoach, NV. During the time of Ancient Lake Lahontan, one could watch the sun slowly rise over a vast high elevation lake. Perhaps I will attempt to capture this sight in a future rendering.
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
