The Bullfrog Hills are a small
mountain range
A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have aris ...
of the
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...
in southern
Nye County, southwestern
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...
.
Bullfrog Hills was so named from a fancied resemblance of its ore to the color of a bullfrog.
Geography
To the range's east are
Beatty, the
Amargosa River
The Amargosa River is an waterway, 185 miles (298 km) long, in southern Nevada and eastern California in the United States. The Amargosa River is one out of two rivers located in the California portion of the Mojave Desert with perennial f ...
,
US Route 95, and the
Bare Mountains. The
Amargosa Valley
The Amargosa Valley is the valley through which the Amargosa River flows south, in Nye County, southwestern Nevada and Inyo County in the state of California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies ...
is on the southeast and on the south with
Nevada State Route 374. To the southwest lies the
Amargosa Range
The Amargosa Range is a mountain range in Inyo County, California, San Bernardino County, California and Nye County, Nevada. The range runs along most of the eastern side of California's Death Valley, separating it from Nevada's Amargosa Desert ...
along the Nevada–California border.
Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park is a national park of the United States that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern sect ...
and the
Grapevine Mountains
The Grapevine Mountains is a mountain range located along the border of Inyo County, California and Nye County, Nevada in the United States. The mountain range is about long and lies in a northwest-southeasterly direction along the Nevada-Calif ...
are to the west.
Pahute Mesa is to the north, beyond
Sarcobatus Flat and US Route 95.
[
The highpoint of the range is Sawtooth Mountain, at in elevation.][Nevada Atlas & Gazetteer, DeLorme, c. 2010, p. 64-65.]
The hill's southern flanks are part of the Amargosa Desert
The Amargosa Desert is located in Nye County in western Nevada, United States, along the California–Nevada border, comprising the northeastern portion of the geographic Amargosa Valley, north of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.
T ...
, a sub-ecoregion of the Mojave Desert and Great Basin Desert
The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range in the western United States. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife ...
ecoregions.
Mining history
The historic Rhyolite
Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture (geology), texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained matri ...
mining district and town was in the Bullfrog Hills. The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad
The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad was a former class II railroad that served eastern California and southwestern Nevada.
The railroad was built mainly to haul borax from Francis Marion Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company mines located just eas ...
crossed the hills to its Rhyolite Station via the Bullfrog Goldfield Railroad.
The Bullfrog mining district was located along the south margin of the hills. The original Bullfrog Mine is located on the south flank of Bullfrog Mountain to the west of Rhyolite, and now just inside the northeast corner of the Death Valley National Monument
Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose shor ...
.[''Beatty, Nevada–California,'' 30x60 Minute Topographic Quadrangle, USGS, 1986]
See also
* Amargosa Toad
*
References
External links
Mountain ranges of Nevada
Amargosa Desert
Mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert
Mountain ranges of the Great Basin
Mountain ranges of Nye County, Nevada
{{NyeCountyNV-geo-stub