Roadside Geology of Nevada

Driving through Nevada, you may be miles from nowhere, but you are never far from an interesting rock, the shoreline of an ice age lake, or an active or historic mine. The Silver State has some of the most diverse geology in the United States, and much of it lies in plain sight thanks to the arid climate of the Great Basin. Geologic forces continue to shape Nevada, stretching it apart and bringing magma near the surface. Earthquakes periodically rock its lonely outposts, creating some of the biggest fault scarps in the world. With the help of Roadside Geology of Nevada, you can appreciate geologic features along more than thirty of Nevada’s highways. Some of Nevada’s Geologic Highlights Great Basin National Park’s limestone caverns Virginia City and the Comstock Lode Tule Springs Fossil Beds Valley of Fire’s bright red rock Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park’s fossil reptiles Lake Tahoe’s granitic eastern shore Pyramid Lake’s tufa towers Ruby Mountains’ glacially carved Lamoille Canyon Red Rock Canyon’s Jurassic sandstone Alamo’s extraterrestrial impact Virgin Valley’s fossils and opal Cathedral Gorge’s lakebed badlands Frenchman Mountain’s Great Unconformity Hoover Dam’s tough tuff

Since mapping the geology of the Roberts Mountains as a college student in the 1970s, Frank DeCourten has been fascinated by geology and landscapes of the Basin and Range region. For more than four decades he has taught geology and conducted geological research in and around the Great Basin of northern Nevada. Since 1994, Frank has been Professor of Earth Sciences at Sierra College in Grass Valley, California. He currently lives in Penn Valley, California, with his wife, Becky, and dog, Blue.Norma Biggar graduated from Antioch College and went on to earn a Masters degree at the University of Alaska. She went to work for a consulting company, first evaluating the seismic hazards along the Alyeska pipeline and later evaluating seismic hazards in such far-flung places as Iran, Colombia, and Israel. The latest project was on the high-level nuclear waste project in Nevada, on which she worked for fifteen years from her home in Las Vegas. Upon retirement, her attention turned to hiking, dancing, propagating native plants, and compiling Roadside of Geology of Nevada.