Table of Contents
What is the main reason the Great Basin region is mostly desert?
The Great Basin Desert exists because of the “rainshadow effect” created by the Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California. When prevailing winds from the Pacific Ocean rise to go over the Sierra, the air cools and loses most of its moisture as rain.
Why was Great Basin National Park created?
Great Basin National Park was established on October 27, 1986. Prior to that time, the area existed as Lehman Caves National Monument, (established in 1922) and Humboldt National Forest’s Wheeler Peak Scenic Area. The park was established to set aside exceptional examples of the Great Basin region.
What is the Great Basin culture?
The Great Basin Culture Area is the region between the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California and the Cascade Mountains in Oregon on the west to the Rocky Mountains on the east.
Where does the Great Basin drain to?
The defining attribute of the Great Basin is that precipitation falls within it’s watershed and never reaches an ocean – it drains to the salty basins and lakes of the interior intermountain west where it eventually seeps into the ground or evaporates.
What does Great Basin mean in history?
The Great Basin Culture Area or indigenous peoples of the Great Basin is a cultural classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas and a cultural region located between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.
What is the culture of the Great Basin?
The traditional cultures of the Great Basin are often characterized according to their use or rejection of horses, although people inhabited the region for thousands of years before horses became available. Groups that used the horse generally occupied the northern and eastern sections of the culture area.
Why was the Great Basin important to the US?
Eastern California and Nevada proved to be extremely abundant in timber, water, and minerals, resources that the growing American economy sought. The American public wanted Native American lands and there was little protection for the Great Basin groups.
Why was racism a problem in the Great Basin?
Racism was a precondition for American expansion and development throughout California and the Great Basin as white settlers firmly believed in their right to take Native American lands and abuse Native American peoples. They used both religious and intellectual justification for their violent and criminal acts.
Where did the people of the Great Basin live?
Beginning in the early 1600s European presence greatly changed the lives of the Great Basin peoples living in what are now eastern Utah and Colorado. Located directly north of the Spanish colony of New Mexico, the Utes were the first Great Basin group to experience the pressures introduced by Europeans in the American West.
Where did the Utes of the Great Basin come from?
Located directly north of the Spanish colony of New Mexico, the Utes were the first Great Basin group to experience the pressures introduced by Europeans in the American West. In the seventeenth century Spanish-introduced trade items, particularly the horse, began to make their way out of New Mexico and into the eastern Great Basin.