Dixie Valley, Nevada, was a small ranching town in

Churchill County, Nevada Churchill County is a county in the western U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,516. Its county seat is Fallon. Named for Mexican–American War hero brevet Brigadier General Sylvester Churchill, the county wa ...

until the area was acquired in 1995 by the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

for the Fallon Range Training Complex (FRTC). The town had no retail businesses, most residents were more than a mile from their nearest neighbor, and a 1-room school (grades 1–8) was the teacher's residence and served as a meeting, dance, and election hall (grades 9–12 were bussed 75 miles to

Fallon, Nevada Fallon is a city in Churchill County in the U.S. state of Nevada. The population was 9,327 at time of the 2020 census. Fallon is the county seat of Churchill County and is located in the Lahontan Valley. History The community was first populat ...

). The abandoned town of Dixie was established at the head of Dixie Valley in 1861 and named by Southern sympathizers. The medium-sized Dixie Valley geothermal power plant (1988, 66 megawatts) employs ~30 people and has 12 production steam wells and ~24

injection well An injection well is a device that places fluid deep underground into porous rock formations, such as sandstone or limestone, or into or below the shallow soil layer. The fluid may be water, wastewater, brine (salt water), or water mixed with indus ...

1954 earthquakes

A very large

doublet earthquake __NOTOC__ In seismology, doublet earthquakes – and more generally, multiplet earthquakes – were originally identified as multiple earthquakes with nearly identical waveforms originating from the same location. They are now characterized as sin ...

occurred on December 16, 1954. The Dixie Valley–Fairview earthquakes occurred four minutes apart, each with a maximum

Mercalli intensity The Modified Mercalli intensity scale (MM, MMI, or MCS), developed from Giuseppe Mercalli's Mercalli intensity scale of 1902, is a seismic intensity scale used for measuring the intensity of shaking produced by an earthquake. It measures the eff ...

of X (''Extreme''). The initial shock measured 7.3 and the second shock measured 6.9 . Damage to man-made structures was minimal because the region was sparsely populated at the time, but oblique-slip motion on a normal fault resulted in the appearance of large

fault scarp A fault scarp is a small step or offset on the ground surface where one side of a fault has moved vertically with respect to the other. It is the topographic expression of faulting attributed to the displacement of the land surface by movement a ...

References

{{Authority control Ghost towns in Churchill County, Nevada Ghost towns in Nevada 1861 establishments in Nevada Territory