The mountains in the McCullough Range lie mostly above the city of Henderson in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...

. The range has two distinct areas with the northern portion being primarily

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates ...

in origin, while the southern part of the range is primarily composed of

metamorphic rock Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock ( protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, cau ...

. McCullough Range was named after a pioneer settler.

Wilderness Areas

Some of the northern part of the range is designated as the North McCullough Wilderness by the

US Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the m ...

's Bureau of Land Management while some of the southern part of the range is similarly designated as the South McCullough Wilderness. In addition the North McCullough Wilderness Area is within the newly designated Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area which allows further protection and enhancement.

McCullough Range geography

The McCullough Range is surrounded by three valleys. First, the

Las Vegas Valley The Las Vegas Valley is a major metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada, and the second largest in the Southwestern United States. The state's largest urban agglomeration, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area i ...

lies to the north; next, the north region of the

Ivanpah Valley The Ivanpah Valley is in southeastern California and southern Nevada in the United States. The valley is between the New York Mountains and the Ivanpah Mountains in San Bernardino County on the California side, and in Clark County on the Nev ...

, with two major

dry lake A dry lake bed, also known as a playa, is a basin or depression that formerly contained a standing surface water body, which disappears when evaporation processes exceeds recharge. If the floor of a dry lake is covered by deposits of alkaline c ...

s borders the west; and to the east lies the

endorheic An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes ...

basin of the

Eldorado Valley Eldorado Valley, or El Dorado Valley, is a Great Basin valley in the Mojave Desert southeast of Las Vegas and southwest of Boulder City, Nevada. The valley is endorheic, containing the Eldorado Dry Lake. The Great Basin Divide, transects ridgelin ...

. The range specifically borders one mountain range at the south, being connected to the northeast higher elevation foothills of the New York Mountains. Just northeast of the intersection of the two ranges, and in the southwest of Eldorado Valley lies the small Highland Range.

Natural history

Northern

In the northern portion of the McCullough Range elevation spans from at the eastern base of the range to at

Black Mountain Black Mountain may refer to: Places Australia * Black Mountain (Australian Capital Territory), a mountain in Canberra * Black Mountain, New South Wales, a village in Armidale Regional Council, New South Wales * Black Mountain, Queensland, a loca ...

. The peaks are volcanic in origin, rounded to flat-topped, and have a steep eastern escarpment and a gradual western slope. The area supports a unique combination of plants from the Mojave and Sonoran deserts and

Great Basin Desert The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basi ...

ecosystems. The primary vegetation is a

creosote bush ''Larrea tridentata'', called creosote bush and greasewood as a plant, chaparral as a medicinal herb, and ''gobernadora'' ( Spanish for "governess") in Mexico, due to its ability to secure more water by inhibiting the growth of nearby plants. In ...

community with barrel cactus (''Ferocactus cylindraceus''),

Joshua trees ''Yucca brevifolia'' is a plant species belonging to the genus ''Yucca''. It is tree-like in habit, which is reflected in its common names: Joshua tree, yucca palm, tree yucca, and palm tree yucca. This monocotyledonous tree is native to the ar ...

(''Yucca brevifolia''), various chollas (''Cylindropuntia'' spp.) and prickly pears (''Opuntia'' spp.). Unlike other mountain ranges in Clark County, the McCullough Range is volcanic in origin. Examples of lava flows, ash falls and glassy zones are clearly visible. The area supports native black gramma grass (''Bouteloua eriopoda''), which is not known to occur anywhere else in Nevada and stands of

teddy bear cholla ''Cylindropuntia bigelovii'', the teddy-bear cholla ''(choy-ya''), is a Cylindropuntia, cholla cactus species native to Northwestern Mexico, and to the United States in California, Arizona, and Nevada. Description ''Cylindropuntia bigelovii'' ...

(''Cylindropuntia bigelovii''), which is the northernmost extent of the species. Remarkable

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

panels and other important cultural resource features occur within the wilderness area. Another peak northeast of Black Mountain is home to most of the radio and television transmission towers for the Las Vegas Valley.

Southern

The southern portion consists of a north–south mountain range that drops off gradually to numerous valleys, foothills and sloping bajadas on the east and west flanks. Elevations range from in the northwest portion of the area to at McCullough Mountain in the center of the wilderness. Most of the area is composed of metamorphosed

Precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of th ...

rock,

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies und ...

, and

schist Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock showing pronounced schistosity. This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a low-power hand lens, oriented in such a way that the rock is easily split into thin flakes ...

, although

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90% of a ...

and

andesite Andesite () is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predomina ...

flows occur in the northern reaches of the southern portion.

Creosote bush ''Larrea tridentata'', called creosote bush and greasewood as a plant, chaparral as a medicinal herb, and ''gobernadora'' ( Spanish for "governess") in Mexico, due to its ability to secure more water by inhibiting the growth of nearby plants. In ...

(''Larrea tridentata'') scrub occurs below ; Joshua trees, Mojave yucca (''Yucca schidigera''), and other cacti occur between ; blackbrush occurs between ; pinyon-juniper occurs above . Scattered

mesquite Mesquite is a common name for several plants in the genus '' Prosopis'', which contains over 40 species of small leguminous trees. They are native to dry areas in the Americas. They have extremely long roots to seek water from very far under g ...

/catclaw communities also occur in washes throughout the area. Signs of prehistoric and

Pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

habitation have been found in the area, including rock art, occupation and settlement sites, and pinyon pine nut caches. This was part of the historic homeland of the Mojave people. The

desert tortoise The desert tortoise (''Gopherus agassizii''), is a species of tortoise in the family Testudinidae. The species is native to the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, and to the Sinaloan thornscr ...

, Nelson bighorn sheep, Gambel's quail and chukar are present.

References

This article incorporates public domain text from Bureau of Land Management sources listed above.

External links

The McCullough Range: information websiteVolcanic Centers of the Northern McCullough Range
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mccullough Range Mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert Mountain ranges of Nevada Mountain ranges of the Lower Colorado River Valley Eldorado Valley Ivanpah Valley Mountain ranges of Clark County, Nevada Protected areas of the Mojave Desert Bureau of Land Management areas in Nevada