What's Out There?
Honoring Native Land
The Numu (Northern Paiute) have been utilizing the resources of the Wovoka Wilderness for at least 12,000 years. Therefore, this area is rich in cultural resources, including drive fences, petroglyphs, house rings, ritual sites, Paleoindian (or Paleoarchaic) sites, house rings and even standing, remaining houses, and tool-making sites. A prehistoric village site, with at least 20 house rings, exists within this Wilderness. For countless generations, local Paiutes have looked to this area for important pine-nut, animal hunting, geological resources including obsidian, aphanitic basalt, chert, chalcedony and cryptocrystalline knapping materials, mineral and plant pigments and many medicinal resources. Today these traditional life ways continue and are relied upon within the Wovoka Wilderness.
History
Recorded history of this area begins with the establishment of the mining town of Aurora in Utah Territory in 1861. When this town boomed, alternate routes to connect the area with San Francisco were investigated including a proposed wagon road down Rough Creek to the Elbow of the West Walker River traversing northwest around the southern tip of the future Wilderness then north along the western edge through Dalzell Canyon where today remains multiple stage stops near highway 338 that would have been a day's journey apart by wagon. This was to become the Esmeralda Road and was traversed by none other than Mark Twain in the 1860s and many other, though less known figures of that time. With the fading of mineral wealth in the Aurora and Masonic areas in the 1870s, travel around the boundary of the Wovoka Wilderness area declined and the local economy shifted to ranching operations. Several large ranch holdings in the area were acquired by the state of Nevada to be include in Walker River State Recreation Area in 2017, now known as the Walker River State Recreation Area. The State Parks works with the Walker Basin Conservancy and the Nevada Department of Wildlife on stewardship activities, including work to protect priority habitat for the Bi-State Sage-Grouse. While these State Lands are designed to be accessible for a variety of users, the Wovoka Wilderness provides a place where traditional forms of recreation, like hikers, explorers, equestrians, backcountry skiers, flyfishers and hunters, and others can pursue these forms of recreation without the disturbance of engines.
Natural History
Geology
Nearly the the entirety of Wovoka Wilderness is composed of Tertiary volcanic rocks dating between 6 and 7.5 million years old. The highest elevations of the Wilderness, including Bald Mountain at 9,407 feet, is comprised of andesite flows and the remainder of the unit is dominated by basalt flows, multi-colored rhyolite, and undifferentiated volcanic sedimentary rocks. Occasional flat, open valleys and small seasonal lake basins comprised of more recent alluvium provide a counter point to the rugged and rocky character of the dominant volcanic features of the area.
Wildlife
Ecologically, the Wovoka Wilderness offers a critical link between the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin. To the west lie the Sweetwater Mountains; to the south, the Bodie Hills; to the east, the Wassuk Range and its Mt. Grant. The Pine Grove Range provides critical habitat and migration corridors, both north-south in the Pine Grove Range and into the Bodie Hills, and east-west from the Wassuks and Mt. Grant through the Pine Grove Range to the Sweetwaters and Sierra Nevada Range for multiple species. This largely undeveloped landscape allows species to migrate seasonally and in response to stress caused by fire and drought. The Wovoka Wilderness contains critical habitat for the bi-state Greater Sage Grouse population including leks and summer, winter, and nesting habitat. Other important birds and animals include bighorn sheep, blackbear, bobcat, cougar, nesting Golden Eagles, small-footed myotis bats, Townsend's big-eared bats, and Apache silverspot butterflies. The range also is home to Mountain Quail, all three accipiters known to the state (Sharp-Shinned, Cooper's and Northern Goshawks), Prairie Falcons, Merlins, up to nine species of owl (Great-Horned, Long-Eared, Short-Eared, Barn, Western Screech, Flammulated, Northern Pygmy, Northern Saw-Whet, and Burrowing Owls), and an astounding, rare assortment of endemic passerine bird species.
Plants
The Wilderness is characterized by pinyon-juniper woodland and extensive balds of sagebrush community. Important plants include Williams combleaf, Bodie Hills draba (Cusickiella quadricostata) Mono County phacelia, Jeffrey pine and Barneby's serpentweed. The East Walker River adjacent lands are lined with willow thickets and cottonwood trees. The numerous springs in the area support small stands of cottonwoods. At higher elevations, there exists multiple forb species such as lupine, larkspur, monkey flower, and blue-eyed marry.