- Location
- Nevada
- Current protection
- Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and BLM lands, including the Arc Dome, Alta Toquima, and Table Mountain wildernesses
- Status
- No active campaign
- Tier
- Tier 2 · National Monument
- In the book
- Not featured in Undiscovered America
Why should it be a National Park?
In the middle of Nevada, three parallel ranges, the Toiyabe, the Toquima, and the Monitor, rise to nearly 12,000 feet above sagebrush valleys, with alpine tundra, aspen groves, rushing creeks, and some of the most remote country left in the lower 48.
Thousands of petroglyphs and stone artifacts record people living here as long as 12,000 years ago, and ghost towns like Belmont and Berlin, with its ichthyosaur fossils, record the mining rush. The Great Basin has one National Park, at its eastern edge. Its heart deserves one too.
The history of National Park Campaigns
In 2010, a leaked Interior Department paper named the Heart of the Great Basin, in Nye County, among 14 places that were good candidates for a national monument, describing a globally unique mix of cultural, wildlife, and historical values. Nevada Rep. Dean Heller objected to monuments that bypassed Congress, and no designation followed.
- Distinct National Park attempts
- 0
- Other designation attempts
- 1 (2010 prospective monument)
Sources
- U.S. Department of the Interior, "Prospective Conservation Designation: National Monument Designations under the Antiquities Act" (2010)
- Society of Environmental Journalists, "Nevada Rep Concerned Over Call for National Monuments" (2010)
- Wikipedia, List of proposed national monuments of the United States
- 1989
The Nevada Wilderness Protection Act designates the Arc Dome, Alta Toquima, and Table Mountain wildernesses.
- 2010
An Interior Department paper lists the Heart of the Great Basin among 14 prospective national monuments; Rep. Dean Heller objects.