Great Basin National Park
Near Great Basin Np, Nevada
About sixty miles east of Ely, the Snake Range rises from the basin floor to Wheeler Peak, at thirteen thousand and sixty-three feet the second highest summit in Nevada, and at its foot Lehman Caves extend through hundreds of feet of decorated limestone. Together they form the core of Great Basin National Park, established in nineteen eighty-six. Ely is the nearest city of any size and serves as the regional gateway.
Lehman Caves were discovered by a rancher named Absalom Lehman in eighteen eighty-five, who opened them to paying visitors and found himself running one of the earliest cave tourism operations in the West. The cave contains an exceptional density of formations, including stalactites, stalagmites, and shield speleothems, a rare formation found in very few caves on earth. The National Park Service offers daily guided tours through the main chambers.
Above the caves, the Snake Range climbs through mountain mahogany and limber pine to a subalpine bristlecone pine forest near Wheeler Peak's summit. Bristlecone pines are among the oldest living organisms on earth. One tree in this grove, discovered in nineteen sixty-four, was found to be nearly five thousand years old, the oldest known living tree at the time of its discovery. That particular tree was subsequently cut down by researchers, an act the Park Service has never fully lived down. Others in the grove are nearly as old and continue to grow at elevations where almost nothing else survives.
