Piute Wash

Piute Wash
	Outfall region of Piute Wash; (NW of Needles & Colorado River); (southeast Dead Mountains)
	Piute Wash (north, Cal-Nev-Ari, Nevada); in Nevada and California
Location
Country	United States
State	Nevada, California
Region	(southeast)- Mojave Desert
District	Searchlight, NV-N; Needles, CA & Mohave Valley, AZ-SE
City	Cal-Nev-Ari, NV
Physical characteristics
Length	45 mi (72 km), (N-to-S, then E-(8 mi))

Last updated May 02, 2019

The Piute Wash of extreme southeastern Nevada and northeast San Bernardino County California is the south-flowing drainage of the Piute Valley. The wash and valley are located northwest of Needles, California.

Nevada is a state in the Western United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th most extensive, the 32nd most populous, but the 9th least densely populated of the U.S. states. Nearly three-quarters of Nevada's people live in Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area where three of the state's four largest incorporated cities are located. Nevada's capital, however, is Carson City.

San Bernardino County, officially the County of San Bernardino, is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is located within the Greater Los Angeles area. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the population was 2,035,210, making it the fifth-most populous county in California, and the 12th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is San Bernardino.

The Piute Valley is a 45-mile-long (72 km) north–south valley southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, and northwest of Needles. The north of the valley is at Searchlight, with some of the valley extending northwest from Searchlight. At the center-north lies Cal-Nev-Ari, Nevada.

The Piute Wash watershed and Piute Valley drain the eastern flank of the north-south Piute Range; the main wash drains portions of the northwest Newberry Mountains. The wash hugs the eastern portion of the Piute Valley, and in the southeast of the valley, the wash skirts the west of the Dead Mountains, then traverses the southwest and south perimeter of the Dead Mountains, then descends steeply toward its outfall into the Colorado River in California adjacent Needles. I-40 also descends steeply in this stretch down to Needles.

The Piute Range is located in the Mojave Desert, primarily in northeast San Bernardino County, California, United States, with a north portion in Nevada. Most of the range is the eastern border of the Mojave National Preserve, a National Park Service natural area and park.

The Newberry Mountains in Nevada are located east of Cal-Nev-Ari and the United States Coast Guard LORAN station in the southern part of the state. The range is Nevada's southernmost named mountain range, and lies to the northwest of the town of Laughlin and west of Lake Mohave. The Newberry Mountains connect with the Eldorado Mountains and The Highland Mountains.

The Dead Mountains are a mountain range in the southeastern Mojave Desert, in San Bernardino County, California. The range borders the tri-state intersection of Nevada, Arizona and California, and the Mohave Valley, with the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation bordering the range foothills on the east and northeast, in the three states.

The Piute Valley and Wash are north–south trending as are the mountains bordering west and east; the wash's abrupt traverse east to its outfall is about an 8-mile (13 km) stretch.

South Piute Valley

Southern portions of the wash receive some north flowing drainages from the north of the Sacramento Mountains. Also, west of the western perimeter Piute Range of Piute Valley, the Sacramento Wash (Clark County, Nevada) flows south, with the Fenner Valley in the northwest. The Sacramento Wash then turns east to join the Piute Wash. In the southwest a water divide separates the Ward Valley draining southwestwards into San Bernardino County.

The Sacramento Mountains are a mountain range in the Eastern Mojave Desert and within Mojave Trails National Monument, in San Bernardino County, California.

The Sacramento Wash (California) is the drainage southward, then east from the Lanfair Valley of extreme eastern San Bernardino County, California. The drainage combines with the Piute Wash-(mostly of Nevada) at the south terminus of the Dead Mountains, and immediately enters the Colorado River, just north of Needles, California. Another Sacramento Wash occurs across the Colorado, as an eastern drainage from northwest Arizona, also at Needles, CA.

The Ward Valley (California) is a lengthy almost true N-S trending valley of far eastern San Bernardino County, California.

Piute Wash watershed

The Piute drainage is west of the Colorado River and Lake Mohave. A narrow drainage from the Newberry and Dead Mountains drain into the Havasu-Mohave Lakes Watershed.

The Colorado River is one of the principal rivers in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The 1,450-mile-long (2,330 km) river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. and two Mexican states. Starting in the central Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the river flows generally southwest across the Colorado Plateau and through the Grand Canyon before reaching Lake Mead on the Arizona–Nevada border, where it turns south toward the international border. After entering Mexico, the Colorado approaches the mostly dry Colorado River Delta at the tip of the Gulf of California between Baja California and Sonora.

Lake Mohave is a reservoir on the Colorado River between the Hoover Dam and Davis Dam in Cottonwood Valley defining the border between Nevada and Arizona in the United States. This 67 mile stretch of the Colorado River flows past Boulder City, Nelson, Searchlight, Cottonwood Cove, Cal-Nev-Ari, and Laughlin to the west in Nevada and Willow Beach and Bullhead City to the east in Arizona. A maximum width of 4 miles wide and an elevation of 647 feet (197 m), Lake Mohave encompasses 28,260 acres of water. As Lake Mead lies to the north of the Hoover Dam, Lake Mohave and adjacent lands forming its shoreline are part of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area administered by the U.S. National Park Service.

To the north of the Piute Wash watershed and Searchlight is the north-flowing Eldorado Valley, an endorheic basin that forms a dry lake.

Searchlight is an unincorporated town and census-designated place (CDP) in Clark County, Nevada, United States, at the topographic saddle between two mountain ranges. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 539.

Eldorado Valley, or El Dorado Valley, is a Great Basin valley in the Mojave Desert southeast of Las Vegas and southwest of Boulder City, Nevada. The valley is endorheic, containing the Eldorado Dry Lake. The Great Basin Divide, transects ridgelines and saddles, on the north, northeast, east, and south around the valley, as the valley sits on the east of the McCullough Range, a Great Basin massif, on the Great Basin Divide at its north terminus and its south terminus.

A dry lake is either a basin or depression that formerly contained a standing surface water body, which disappeared when evaporation processes exceeded recharge. If the floor of a dry lake is covered by deposits of alkaline compounds, it is known as an alkali flat. If covered with salt, it is known as a salt flat.

Cal-Nev-Ari, Nevada, is in the northern third of the valley.^{[ citation needed ]} The elevation of Piute Wash outfall at the Colorado River, just north of Needles, is 488 feet (149 m).^[1]

Cal-Nev-Ari is a census-designated place on U.S. Route 95 in Clark County, Nevada, United States, near the state's southernmost point. As of the 2010 census, the town had a population of 244. The town's name is a syllabic abbreviation of California, Nevada, and Arizona.

Related Research Articles

The Mohave Valley is a valley located mostly on the east shore of the south-flowing Colorado River in northwest Arizona. The valley extends into California's San Bernardino County; the northern side of the valley extends into extreme southeast Clark County, Nevada. The main part of the valley lies in southwest Mohave County, Arizona and is at the intersection of the southeast Mojave and northwest Sonoran deserts.

Goffs, an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California, is a nearly empty one-time railroad town at the route's high point in the Mojave Desert. Goffs was a stop on famous U.S. Route 66 until 1931 when a more direct road opened between Needles and Essex. Goffs was also home to workers of the nearby Santa Fe Railroad, with Homer east, Fenner south, and Blackburn and Purdy north.

The New York Mountains are a small mountain range found in northeastern San Bernardino County in California, USA. The range's northeastern area lies in southeastern Nevada. The range lies just south of the small community of Ivanpah, and north of the Lanfair Valley. The mountains are part of the mountain ranges, cones, mountains, and landforms in the Mojave National Preserve. The mountains reach an elevation of 7,533 feet (2,296 m), and run in a mostly southwest-northeasterly direction between the Providence Mountains and the McCullough Range approximately five miles into Nevada and border the northwest corner of the Piute Valley of Nevada-California.

Lanfair Valley valley in San Bernardino County, United States of America

Lanfair Valley is located in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California near the Nevada state line. It is bounded on the north by the New York Mountains and Castle Mountains, on the east by the Piute Range, and on the south by the Woods Mountains and Vontrigger Hills. Joshua Trees can be found in most of the valley. Elevation is 4,045 feet.

The 112,400-acre (45,500 ha) Warm Springs Wilderness makes up the entirety of the Black Mesa and parts of the surrounding foothills, washes, alluvial fans, and valleys. The Black Mesa is the southernmost section of the Black Mountains of western Mohave County, in northwest Arizona. The region is in the east and southeast of the Mojave Desert of Arizona, southern Nevada, and California.

The Sacramento Valley of northwestern Arizona is a north-south trending valley west and southwest of Kingman in Mohave County. The valley lies just east of the southern section of the Black Mountains. Interstate 40 in Arizona traverses the valley north-south.

The Black Mountains of northwest Arizona are an extensive, mostly linear, north-south 75-mile (121 km) long mountain range. It forms the north-south border of southwest Mohave County as it borders the eastern shore of the south-flowing Colorado River from Hoover Dam.

The San Cristobal Wash is an ephemeral wash and watercourse of the San Cristobal Valley, flowing north into the Gila River Valley of the southwestern desert region of Arizona. Besides Death Valley, the Chihuahuan Desert area, and regions of Baja Peninsula North America, the southeast California deserts along the Lower Colorado River Valley, this drainage region is in the harshest desert regions of North America.

Tenmile Wash is an ephemeral wash and watercourse about 85 miles (137 km) long in the northern Sonoran Desert of south-central Arizona. It forms the eastern drainage of a two drainage system of dry washes into the Gila River Valley; both flow northwesterly, and the western drainage is the San Cristobal Wash Drainage of approximately the same length.

Butler Valley is a valley of the Maria fold and thrust belt in western Arizona, USA. It lies east of the Colorado River, and is south of the west-flowing Bill Williams River.

The Mohave Mountains are a small 18-mi (29 km) long mountain range of northwest Arizona. The range is a northwest trending range in southwest Mohave County that parallels a southeast-flowing stretch of the Colorado River, the Arizona-California border. The range also forms the southwest border of a flatland region to its east and north, namely, Dutch Flat which lies east, at the south end of Sacramento Valley. Lake Havasu City, AZ on the Colorado, lays opposite the southwest flank of the range, where the London Bridge was reconstructed at Lake Havasu.

Chemehuevi Wash river in the United States of America

The Chemehuevi Wash is a large wash of northeast San Bernardino County in the southeast Mojave Desert. The wash enters the center-west bank of Lake Havasu on the California–Arizona border. Chemehuevi Wash drains the center of the Chemehuevi Valley and the regional landforms of washes, valleys and mountains is adjacent the northeast region of the Colorado Desert, the entire region south on the west side of the south-flowing Colorado River.

Vidal Valley is a 20-mile (32 km) long valley in the far eastern Colorado Desert bordering the Colorado River. Most of the valley is in eastern San Bernardino County, California, but the outfall on the Colorado River is in northeast Riverside County. Vidal Valley forms the large border of the south side of the east-west block of the Whipple Mountains massif, the landform that forces the Colorado to flow southeast, then back southwest. The southeast exit of the valley into Parker Valley on the Colorado River skirts the north end of the Riverside Mountains. The Colorado River Aqueduct crosses the midpoint of the valley at Vidal Junction, California. The Vidal Valley also lies due east of the Danby Dry Lake landform.

References

↑ Arizona Road & Recreation Atlas, Needles, CA, elev. 488, pp. 32–33.

External links

Watersheds

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[1] Arizona Road & Recreation Atlas, Needles, CA, elev. 488, pp. 32–33.

Piute Wash
Outfall region of Piute Wash (NW of Needles & Colorado River) (southeast Dead Mountains)
Piute Wash (north, Cal-Nev-Ari, Nevada) in Nevada and California
Location
Country	United States
State	Nevada, California
Region	(southeast)- Mojave Desert
District	Searchlight, NV-N Needles, CA & Mohave Valley, AZ-SE
City	Cal-Nev-Ari, NV
Physical characteristics
Length	45 mi (72 km), (N-to-S, then E-(8 mi))