Fallon: Desert Farms and Naval Aviators

Fallon sits in the Lahontan Valley east of Reno, where the Carson River used to die in the desert. For most of the nineteenth century it was cattle country. The transformation came with the National Reclamation Act of nineteen oh two, one of the first laws Theodore Roosevelt signed as president.

The Newlands Project, named for Nevada Senator Francis Newlands, built Derby Dam and the Truckee Canal to divert water from the Truckee River into the valley. Lahontan Dam followed in nineteen fifteen. Suddenly the desert bloomed with alfalfa, dairy farms, and cantaloupe, and Fallon became the county seat of Churchill County.

Four decades later a second identity arrived. The Navy took over a wartime airfield in nineteen forty-three, and Naval Air Station Fallon eventually became the home of the Navy's elite strike warfare training program, home of the Navy's TOPGUN school since nineteen ninety-six, the program made famous by the nineteen eighty-six film Top Gun. The mountains and desert airspace around Fallon provide some of the most expansive military training ranges in the country.