Snake Valley is a north-south trending valley that straddles the

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, 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. N ...

–

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

border in the central

Great Basin The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California. It is noted fo ...

. It is bound by the

Snake Range The Snake Range is a mountain range in White Pine County, Nevada, United States. The south-central portion of the range is included within Great Basin National Park, with most of the remainder included within the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Fores ...

and the

Deep Creek Mountains The Deep Creek Range, (often refereed to as the Deep Creek Mountains (Goshute: Pi'a-roi-ya-bi), are a mountain range in the Great Basin located in extreme western Tooele and Juab counties in Utah, United States. The range trends north-south (wi ...

to the west and the

Confusion Range The Confusion Range is a north-south trending mountain range in west-central Utah, United States. It is bounded by Snake Valley to the west, Tule Valley to the east, the Great Salt Lake Desert to the north, and the Ferguson Desert to the south ...

to the east. The valley is the gateway to

Great Basin National Park Great Basin National Park is an American national park located in White Pine County in east-central Nevada, near the Utah border, established in 1986. The park is most commonly entered by way of Nevada State Route 488, which is connected to U ...

and Lehman Caves, which are located in the western part of the valley and on the southern Snake Range.

People

Though it is relatively isolated from

civilization A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). ...

today, the human presence in Snake Valley goes back 12,000 years. The oldest accessible evidence of this is the Baker Archeological Site, a

Fremont culture The Fremont culture or Fremont people is a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah, where the culture's sites were discovered by local indigenous peoples like the Navajo and ...

habitat maintained by the BLM. Current communities in the valley include

Baker A baker is a tradesperson who baking, bakes and sometimes Sales, sells breads and other products made of flour by using an oven or other concentrated heat source. The place where a baker works is called a bakery. History Ancient history Si ...

in Nevada and

Garrison A garrison (from the French ''garnison'', itself from the verb ''garnir'', "to equip") is any body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it. The term now often applies to certain facilities that constitute a mili ...

, Burbank, Eskdale,

Callao Callao () is a Peruvian seaside city and region on the Pacific Ocean in the Lima metropolitan area. Callao is Peru's chief seaport and home to its main airport, Jorge Chávez International Airport. Callao municipality consists of the whole Cal ...

, Partoun, Trout Creek, Gandy, and

Border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders ca ...

in Utah. Today, the main industries in the valley are farming and ranching, especially sheep ranching.

Water

Snake Valley is noted for a

water Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as ...

project involving 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 ...

, that would target the underlying

Basin and Range Carbonate Aquifer Basin may refer to: Geography and geology * Depression (geology) ** Back-arc basin, a submarine feature associated with island arcs and subduction zones ** Debris basin, designed to prevent damage from debris flow ** Drainage basin (hydrology), a ...

, an

aquifer An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials ( gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characte ...

that supplies local agriculture and is a relatively large source of water for this region. Though Snake Valley and the surrounding area is arid and part of the

Great Basin Desert The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), 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, a ...

, the (relatively) high ranges like the

, and the Schell Creek Range allow a large snowpack that recharges the regional aquifer. This 'additional' water manifests itself in the many springs, wetlands, and lakes that make Snake Valley surprisingly lush. Thus, Snake Valley has long been a target of wildlife and farmers, with at least one farm (Dearden Ranch in

Burbank, Utah Burbank is a small farming unincorporated community located on the western edge of Millard County, Utah, United States, just east of the Nevada border. It is located in the southern part of Snake Valley, near the opening (northern border) of ...

) in continual operation since the 1880s. The water development project is proposed by the

Southern Nevada Water Authority The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) is a government agency that was founded in 1991 to manage Southern Nevada's water needs on a regional basis in Clark County. SNWA provides wholesale water treatment and delivery for the greater Las Vegas ...

(SNWA), the water authority that services the Las Vegas area. In the proposal, a pipeline would be built from Snake Valley (and Spring Valley) to supply pumped

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and Pore space in soil, soil pore spaces and in the fractures of stratum, rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit ...

to be used as municipal water for the

Clark County, Nevada Clark County is located in the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,265,461. Most of the county population resides in the Las Vegas Census County Divisions, which hold 1,771,945 people as of the 2010 Census, acros ...

region, with amounts ranging up to per year. Local ranchers and environmentalists have objected to this removal of water from local aquifers, comparing the situation to Owens Valley, California and noting local drawdowns and springs drying up allegedly, but indeterminably, from local agricultural pumping, like at Needle Point Springs. Enhanced demand on the water from locals and enhanced hydrogeologic monitoring have occurred as a result of this proposal, including the

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

's BARCASS study and the Utah Geological Survey's Snake Valley Groundwater Monitoring Program. Both studies have generally concluded that precipitation in the high mountains of the area are the source of the far away but anomalously large springs at

Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge is at the southern end of the Great Salt Lake Desert, part of the Great Basin in Juab County, Utah, United States. The Refuge is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. As an oasis in the Grea ...

. Others support the system, noting the importance of the growth and sustainability of the Las Vegas Valley. The largest advocate for the pipeline has been SNWA General Manager Patricia Mulroy. Mulroy has continuously claimed that this water source must be tapped to keep Las Vegas running. Others agree, and have used

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

as an example of proper water management. New York has relied on water from the

Catskills The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas c ...

and

Hudson Valley The Hudson Valley (also known as the Hudson River Valley) comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York. The region stretches from the Capital District including Albany and Troy south to ...

region for more than a century, and due to proper management, these ecosystems continue to flourish, despite the allocation of the water in the Catskills and Hudson Valley.

References

External links

{{commons category, Snake Valley (Great Basin)
Protect Snake Valley Blog

An NPR story on water issues in Snake Valley and Las Vegas
Valleys of Utah Valleys of Nevada Landforms of Juab County, Utah Valleys of Millard County, Utah Valleys of White Pine County, Nevada Valleys of the Great Basin