Mount Tenabo (

Shoshoni The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ), also known by the endonym Newe, are an Indigenous people of the United States with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshone: Southern Idaho * Western Shoshone ...

: "Lookout Mountain") is the principal peak in the Cortez Mountains. The mountain is of cultural and religious significance to the

Western Shoshone Western Shoshone comprise several Shoshone tribes that are indigenous to the Great Basin and have lands identified in the Treaty of Ruby Valley 1863. They resided in Idaho, Nevada, California, and Utah. The tribes are very closely related cult ...

people.

Etymology

There are various theories as to the name's etymology. The mountain may have been named by New Mexicans after an ancient

pueblo Pueblo refers to the settlements of the Pueblo peoples, Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, currently in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. The permanent communities, including some of the oldest continually occupied settlement ...

, or Tenabo may be a

Paiute Paiute (; also Piute) refers to three non-contiguous groups of Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Although their languages are related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, these three languages do not form a single subgroup and th ...

word, meaning of "dark colored water".

Geography

The summit elevation of Mount Tenabo is , which is above the surrounding valleys. Its base is covered with

scrub pine ''Pinus virginiana'', the Virginia pine, scrub pine, Jersey pine, possum pine, is a medium-sized tree, often found on poorer soils from Long Island in southern New York south through the Appalachian Mountains to western Tennessee and Alabama. The ...

. The summit and below is overgrown with grass and shrubs. Approximately to the north is the

Humboldt River The Humboldt River is the longest river in the northern and central part of Nevada. It extends in a general east-to-west direction from its headwaters in northern Nevada's Jarbidge Mountains, Jarbidge, Independence Mountains, Independence, and ...

and its valley. Eastward, there are hills and valleys. To the west is the Smoky Valley, Mount Hope, Bunker Hill, and other peaks of the Toiyabe Range. Mount Tenabo, east of and near the north end of the Toiyabe Range, is about south of Beowawe. At an area approximately above the mountain's base, a vein of silver-bearing quartz cuts through obliquely, penetrating into the valley after for . Its width is . This vein (

stratum In geology and related fields, a stratum (: strata) is a layer of rock or sediment characterized by certain lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separated by visible surfaces known as ...

) contains ore beds, and is encased in crystalline

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

History

Silver ore was discovered at Mount Tenabo in 1862. By the later half of the 1860s, there were at least 20 working mills. In 2008, the Te-Moak tribe, the

Timbisha The Timbisha ("rock paint", Timbisha language: Nümü Tümpisattsi) are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe federally recognized tribes, federally recognized as the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. The ...

tribe and others sought an emergency injunction that would have halted further development of

Barrick Gold Barrick Mining Corporation is a mining company that produces gold and copper. It has mining operations and projects in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Mali, Pakista ...

's Cortez Hills mining operation which includes facilities on the slopes of Mount Tenabo. As of July 2016, mining continues while the BLM prepares a court-ordered supplemental

environmental impact statement An environmental impact statement (EIS), under United States environmental law, is a document required by the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for certain actions "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment". An E ...

References

{{Reflist, 2 Landforms of Eureka County, Nevada Tenabo