Cactus Flat

Cactus Flat
Cactus Flat
	Cactus Flat is the location of the Tonopah Test Range Airport (left of center).
Floor elevation	1630
Geography
Country	United States
State	Nevada
Borders on	Cactus Range and Kawich Range [1]
Coordinates	37°41′N116°40′W / 37.683°N 116.667°W Coordinates: 37°41′N116°40′W / 37.683°N 116.667°W [2]

Last updated June 20, 2019

Cactus Flat is one of the Central Nevada Desert Basins^[3] in the Cactus-Sacrobatus Watershed, for which it is an eponym. The flat is the location of the Tonopah Test Range Airport and Tonopah Test Range, a component of the Nevada Test and Training Range used for weapons testing since the 1950s.^[4] The flat is also the site of the 615 sq mi (1,590 km²) Nevada Wild Horse Range of the Nellis Air Force Range.^[5]

An eponym is a person, place, or thing after whom or after which something is named, or believed to be named. The adjectives derived from eponym include eponymous and eponymic. For example, Elizabeth I of England is the eponym of the Elizabethan era, and "the eponymous founder of the Ford Motor Company" refers to Henry Ford. Recent usage, especially in the recorded-music industry, also allows eponymous to mean "named after its central character or creator".

Tonopah Test Range Airport, at the Tonopah Test Range is 27 NM southeast of Tonopah, Nevada and 140 mi (230 km) northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. It is a major airfield with a 12,000 ft × 150 ft runway, instrument approach facilities, and nighttime illumination. The facility boasts over fifty hangars and an extensive support infrastructure.

The Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) is one of two military training areas used by the United States Air Force Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. The NTTR land area includes a "simulated Integrated Air Defense System", several individual ranges with 1200 targets, and 4 remote communication sites. The current NTTR area and the range's former areas have been used for aerial gunnery and bombing, for nuclear tests, as a proving ground and flight test area, for aircraft control and warning, and for Blue Flag, Green Flag, and Red Flag exercises.

The Kawich Range lies to the northeast and the Cactus Range to the southwest. Jack Rabbit Knob is 11.5 km (7.1 mi) east of Antelope Lake playa in Cactus Flat.^[6]

The Kawich Range is a mountain range in Nye County in southern Nevada in the United States, just south of the Hot Creek Range. The southern part of the range lies on the Nellis Air Force Range. The mountains cover an area of about 250 square miles (650 km²) and contain Kawich Peak, at 9,399 feet (2,865 m) above sea level. U.S. Route 6 crosses the pass between The Kawich and the Hot Creek ranges and meets State Route 375 at Warm Springs just north of the range. To the east lies the Reveille and Kawich valleys with the Reveille Range to the east of the northern portion and the Belted Range east of Quartzite Mountain at the southern end. The broad Pahute Mesa and Gold Flat lie to the south with Cactus Flat and the Cactus Range to the southwest. To the northwest across Stone Cabin Valley lies the Monitor Range.

The Cactus Range is a small mountain range in Nye County, Nevada. The range lies southwest of Cactus Flat and north of Pahute Mesa. Goldfield lies 23 mi (37 km) to the west in Esmeralda County. The range lies within the restricted area of the Tonopah Test Range.

Cactus Flat has three cactus types (Beavertail cactus, Calico cactus and Barrel cactus).^[1]^:66

Barrel cacti are various members of the two genera Echinocactus and Ferocactus, found in the deserts of Southwestern North America. Some of the largest specimens can be found in the Mojave Desert in southern California.

Related Research Articles

Tonopah is an unincorporated town in and the county seat of Nye County, Nevada, United States. It is located at the junction of U.S. Routes 6 and 95, approximately midway between Las Vegas and Reno. In the 2010 census, the population was 2,478. The census-designated place (CDP) of Tonopah has a total area of 16.2 square miles (42 km²), all land.

Great Basin large depression in western North America

The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Oregon and Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, and Wyoming. It is noted for both its arid climate and the basin and range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than 100 miles (160 km) away at the summit of Mount Whitney. The region spans several physiographic divisions, biomes, ecoregions, and deserts.

The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region (in the Great Basin shrub steppe eco-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 (160 km) north of Reno, Nevada that encompasses more than 300,000 acres (120,000 ha) of land and contains more than 120 miles (200 km) 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 Meadow Valley Wash is a southern Nevada stream draining the Meadow Watershed that is bordered on three sides by the Great Basin Divide. The wash's Lincoln County headpoint is in the Wilson Creek Range, and the wash includes two upper confluences. Panaca is along the upper wash, and downstream of Caliente is the wash's confluence with its east fork. Just prior to the junction with the Muddy River, the wash flows from Lincoln County into northeastern Clark County. It flows into the Muddy in the Moapa Valley just west of Glendale adjacent to Interstate 15 approximately 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Las Vegas.

Quinn River river in the United States of America

The Quinn River, once known as the Queen River, is an intermittent river, approximately 110 miles (180 km) long, in the desert of northwestern Nevada in the United States. It drains an enclosed basin inside the larger Great Basin.

Jackass Flats is a shallow alluvial basin located in the southwest portion of the Nevada National Security Site in Nye County, Nevada. The area lies east of Yucca Mountain, south of the Calico Hills and Shoshone Mountain and northwest of Skull Mountain. The valley drains to the southwest via the Tonopah and Fortymile washes into the Amargosa Valley across US Route 95 at Amargosa Valley. The "flat" covers an area of approximately 120 square miles (310 km²) and ranges in elevation from about 2,800 ft (850 m) just north of US 95 to 4,000 ft (1,200 m) at the mountain bases to the north and east.

Railroad Valley Valley in Nye County, United States of America

Railroad Valley is one of the Central Nevada Desert Basins in the Tonopah Basin and is ~80 miles (130 km) long north-south and up to 20 miles (32 km) wide, with some southern areas running southwest to northeast. The southern end of the valley begins near Gray Top Mountain and stretches north all the way to Mount Hamilton. To the east are the Quinn Canyon, Grant, and White Pine Ranges, while to the west are the Pancake and Reveille Ranges. Most of the valley lies in Nye County, but it crosses into White Pine County at its northern end. The valley includes numerous springs including Kate Springs and Blue Eagle Springs, ranches such as the Blue Eagle Ranch, and 2 Tonopah Playas.

Honey Lake is an endorheic sink in the Honey Lake Valley in northeastern California, near the Nevada border. Summer evaporation reduces the lake to a lower level of 12 square kilometers and creates an alkali flat.

U.S. Route 6 is a transcontinental highway in the United States, stretching from Bishop, California, in the west to Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the east coast. The Nevada portion crosses the center of the state, serving the cities of Tonopah and Ely, en route to Utah and points further east. Like US 50, to the north, large desolate areas are traversed by the route, with few or no signs of civilization, and the highway crosses several large desert valleys separated by numerous mountain ranges towering over the valley floors, in what is known as the Basin and Range Province of the Great Basin.

Yucca Flat is a closed desert drainage basin, one of four major nuclear test regions within the Nevada Test Site (NTS), and is divided into nine test sections: Areas 1 through 4 and 6 through 10. Yucca Flat is located at the eastern edge of NTS, about ten miles (16 km) north of Frenchman Flat, and 65 miles (105 km) from Las Vegas, Nevada. Yucca Flat was the site for 739 nuclear tests – nearly four of every five tests carried out at the NTS.

The Bullfrog Hills are a small mountain range of the Mojave Desert in southern Nye County, southwestern Nevada. Bullfrog Hills was so named from a fancied resemblance of its ore to the color of a bullfrog.

The Gabbs Valley Range is a mountain range in the west of the central Nevada desert in the Great Basin region. The range is within Mineral County, Nevada.

The Pahute Mesa (landform) is a large, 60 miles (97 km) long mesa in southern Nye County, Nevada. The mesa's southeast region lies in the Nevada Test Site which is southeast; the region in the test site is called Pahute Mesa, one of the major test site sub-regions.

The Carson Desert is a desert in the Lahontan Basin and the desert valley of Churchill County, Nevada (U.S.), which receives an average 5 inches (130 mm) annual precipitation. The desert is the low valley area between the adjacent mountain ranges, while the larger watershed includes the interior slopes of the demarcating ranges. The desert was inundated by Lake Lahontan during the Pleistocene, and the watershed became part of Nevada's Conservation Security Program in 2005.

Sarcobatus Flat is a closed valley in western Nye County, Nevada between Goldfield and Beatty. The Bullfrog Hills form the southern boundary and the Grapevine Mountains along with Bonnie Claire Flat form the western boundary. Pahute Mesa bounds the area to the east and north. To the north the flat is contiguous with Lida Valley and Stonewall Flat.

The Nellis Air Force Base Complex is the southern Nevada military region of federal facilities and lands, e.g., currently and formerly used for military and associated testing and training such as Atomic Energy Commission atmospheric nuclear detonations of the Cold War. The largest land area of the complex is the Nevada Test and Training Range, and numerous Formerly Used Defense Sites remain federal lands of the complex. Most of the facilities are controlled by the United States Air Force and/or the Bureau of Land Management, and many of the controlling units are based at Creech and Nellis Air Force Bases. Initiated by a 1939 military reconnaissance for a bombing range, federal acquisition began in 1940, and McCarren Field became the World War II training area's 1st of 3 Nevada World War II Army Airfields and 10 auxiliary fields. The area's first military unit was initially headquartered in the Las Vegas Federal Building while the WWII Las Vegas Army Airfield buildings were constructed.

References

1 2 Carlson, Helen S. Nevada Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. p. 225. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
↑ "Cactus Flat". Geographic Names Information System . United States Geological Survey.
↑ "Boundary Descriptions and Names of Regions, Subregions, Accounting Units and Cataloging Units". USGS.gov. Retrieved 2010-05-16. Central Nevada Desert Basin
↑ "Final Environmental Assessment for Sanitary Landfill Expansion of the Tonopah Test Range, Nye County, Nevada" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-12-29. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
↑ "Nevada Wild Horse Range-Clark, Lincoln, and Nye Counties, Nevada" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-06-15. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
↑ Cactus Flat, Nevada 1:100,000 scale topographic map, 37116-EM-TM-100, USGS, 1988

External links

"Cactus-Sarcobatus Flats Watershed -- 16060013" . Retrieved 2010-12-07.

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[Carlson-1] 1 2 Carlson, Helen S. Nevada Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. p. 225. Retrieved 2010-10-30.

[2] "Cactus Flat". Geographic Names Information System . United States Geological Survey.

[USGS-3] "Boundary Descriptions and Names of Regions, Subregions, Accounting Units and Cataloging Units". USGS.gov. Retrieved 2010-05-16. Central Nevada Desert Basin

[4] "Final Environmental Assessment for Sanitary Landfill Expansion of the Tonopah Test Range, Nye County, Nevada" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-12-29. Retrieved 2010-12-07.

[5] "Nevada Wild Horse Range-Clark, Lincoln, and Nye Counties, Nevada" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-06-15. Retrieved 2010-12-07.

[6] Cactus Flat, Nevada 1:100,000 scale topographic map, 37116-EM-TM-100, USGS, 1988