The Spring Mountains are a

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 Southern

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 ...

in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, running generally northwest–southeast along the west side of

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

and south to the border with California. Most land in the mountains is owned by the

United States Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 United States National Forest, national forests and 20 United States Natio ...

and the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...

and managed as the

Spring Mountains National Recreation Area The Spring Mountains National Recreation Area (SMNRA) is a U.S. national recreation area, administered by the U.S. Forest Service, west of Las Vegas, Nevada. It covers over . The area runs from low meadows (around above sea level), to the M ...

within the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and the

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area The Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Clark County, Nevada, United States, is an area managed by the Bureau of Land Management as part of its National Landscape Conservation System, and protected as a National Conservation Area. ...

Geography

The Spring Mountains range is named for the number of

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season), a season of the year * Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy * Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water * Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a he ...

s to be found, many of them in the recesses of

, which is on the eastern side of the mountains. The Spring Mountains divide the

Pahrump Valley Pahrump Valley is a Mojave Desert valley west of Las Vegas and the Spring Mountains massif in southern Nye County, Nevada, and eastern San Bernardino County, California. Pahrump, Nevada, is in the valley's center and the Tecopa and Chicago Valley ...

and

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 ...

basins from the

Las Vegas Valley The Las Vegas Valley is a major metropolitan area in the Southern Nevada, 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 St ...

watershed, which drains into the

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

watershed, by way of

Las Vegas Wash Las Vegas Wash is a 12-mile-long stream (an "arroyo" or "wash") which feeds most of the Las Vegas Valley's excess water into Lake Mead. The wash is sometimes called an ''urban river'', and it exists in its present capacity because of an urban pop ...

into

Lake Mead Lake Mead is a reservoir formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in the Southwestern United States. It is located in the states of Nevada and Arizona, east of Las Vegas. It is the largest reservoir in the US in terms of water capacity. L ...

, thus the mountains define part of the boundary of the

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

. The

Great Basin Divide The Great Basin Divide in the western United States is the ridgeline that separates the Great Basin from the Pacific Ocean watershed, which completely surrounds it. The Great Basin is the largest set of contiguous endorheic watersheds of No ...

, (one of the Great Basin region borders) continues north through the Indian Springs Pass region, then turns due east at the perimeter mountain ranges north of Las Vegas.

Mount Charleston

The highest point is

Mount Charleston Mount Charleston, including Charleston Peak (Nuvagantu, literally "where snow sits", in Southern Paiute or Nüpakatütün in Shoshoni) at , is the highest mountain in both the Spring Mountains and Clark County, in Nevada, United States. It ...

(officially Charleston Peak), at . The area around Mount Charleston is protected in the

Mount Charleston Wilderness The Mount Charleston Wilderness Area is located west of Las Vegas, Nevada, Las Vegas in the southern part of the state of Nevada in the western United States. It was created by the Congress of the United States, U.S. Congress in 1989 under the p ...

. The main town in the area is also named

(Nevada), which lies in Kyle Canyon. The area is typically 30-40 °F cooler than the valleys below, and it is a popular getaway for Las Vegas residents and visitors. The

Lee Canyon (Ski and Snowboard Resort) The Lee Canyon Ski and Snowboard Resort is located in Lee Canyon, northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, United States in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and Spring Mountains National Recreation Area. The base lodge is situated at the base of Le ...

lies in

Lee Canyon Lee Canyon is a canyon containing a small community and recreational area in the Spring Mountains located in Clark County, Nevada, United States. Primary access is via Lee Canyon Road. Access to the adjacent Kyle Canyon The Spring Mountains ...

on State Highway 156.

Strawberry Valley

Strawberry Valley is the gap pass on the north point of the Spring Mountains.

U.S. Route 95 in Nevada U.S. Route 95 (US 95) is a major U.S. highway traversing the U.S. state of Nevada from north to south directly through Las Vegas and providing connections to both Carson City (via US 50) and Reno (via Interstate 80). US 95 is cosigned with Inte ...

goes though the pass.

Nevada State Route 160 State Route 160 (SR 160) is a state highway in southern Nevada, United States. It connects the southern Las Vegas Valley to U.S. Route 95 (US 95) northwest of the city via the Pahrump Valley. The southern part of the route sees heavy traffic, m ...

is just west of the Strawberry Valley pass. Nye County, Nevada Improvements ''nyecountynv.gov''
/ref>

Other peaks

In addition to Mount Charleston, other major summits in the Spring Mountains range include Bonanza Peak,

McFarland Peak McFarland Peak is a limestone peak in the northern portion of the Spring Mountains in Clark County of southern Nevada. It is in the Toiyabe National Forest and the Mount Charleston Wilderness. McFarland Peak is located north of Mount Charlesto ...

, Mummy Mountain,

Griffith Peak Griffith Peak is located in the Spring Mountains in Clark County of southern Nevada. It is approximately northwest of the Las Vegas Strip and southeast of Mount Charleston. Griffith Peak is Nevada's 43rd highest peak, and the third highest ...

, Bridge Mountain, Mount Wilson and Mount Potosi.

Biological diversity

The Spring Mountains are a

sky island Sky islands are isolated mountains surrounded by radically different lowland environments. The term originally referred to those found on the Mexican Plateau and has extended to similarly isolated high-elevation forests. The isolation has s ...

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system formed by Organism, organisms in interaction with their Biophysical environment, environment. The Biotic material, biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and en ...

. With an area around , and a vertical range of nearly , the mountains encompass a wide variety of

habitats In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

, and the

biological diversity Biodiversity is the variability of life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distributed evenly on Eart ...

is probably greater than anywhere else in Nevada; 37 species of

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only woody plants with secondary growth, only ...

s are known (more than any other Nevadan range), and 600 species of

vascular plant Vascular plants (), also called tracheophytes (, ) or collectively tracheophyta (; ), are plants that have lignin, lignified tissues (the xylem) for conducting water and minerals throughout the plant. They also have a specialized non-lignified Ti ...

s have been reported from the

alone. The bases of the mountains are part of the Mojave zone dominated by

creosote bush ''Larrea tridentata'', called creosote bush, greasewood, and chaparral is a medicinal herb. In Sonora, it is more commonly called ''hediondilla''; Spanish ''hediondo'' = "smelly". It is a flowering plant in the family Zygophyllaceae. The specific ...

and

white bursage ''Ambrosia dumosa'', the burro-weed or white bursage, a North American species of plants in the family Asteraceae. It is a common constituent of the creosote-bush scrub community throughout the Mojave Desert of California, Nevada, and Utah and ...

, then rising to a

blackbush scrub Blackbush scrub,Mojave Desert Wildflowers, Pam Mackay, p18, 252 or blackbrush scrub,Canyon Country Wildflowers, Damian Fagan, p 3, 105 is a vegetation type of the Western United States deserts characterized by low growing, dark gray blackbush ('' C ...

zone, followed by a

pygmy conifer In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature (as opposed to disproportionate dwarfism occurring in isolated cases in a po ...

zone with

juniper Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' ( ) of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere as far south ...

pinyon pine The pinyon or piñon pine group grows in southwestern North America, especially in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah, with the single-leaf pinyon pine just reaching into southern Idaho. The trees yield edible Pine nut, nuts, which are a sta ...

, and

mountain mahogany ''Cercocarpus'', commonly known as mountain mahogany, is a small genus of at least nine species of nitrogen-fixing flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae. They are native to the western United States and northern Mexico, where they grow i ...

, and topped by a

montane zone Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucial f ...

with many species of conifers around Mt. Charleston and its connecting ridges.

Palmer's chipmunk Palmer's chipmunk (''Neotamias palmeri'') is a species of rodent in the family Sciuridae, endemic to Spring Mountains in southern Nevada. Its natural habitat is temperate forests. Palmer's chipmunks are limited to "sky islands" which are mountai ...

is endemic to the Spring Mountains. File:Charleston peak2.jpg,

in the Spring Mountains, Nevada File:UpperKyleCanyonSMNRA.JPG, The cool, forested slopes of upper Kyle Canyon File:Spring Mountains aerial from south.jpg, The sandstone reefs of Red Rock are seen to bridge the northern and southern parts of the Spring Mountains, in this aerial view from the south File:Populus fremontii ssp fremontii 2.jpg, ''

Populus fremontii ''Populus fremontii'', commonly known as Frémont's cottonwood, is a cottonwood (and thus a poplar) native to riparian zones of the Southwestern United States and northern through central Mexico. It is one of three species in ''Populus'' sect ...

'' tree in the Spring Mountains

References

External links

USDA Spring Mountain Page

Spring Mountains Peaks: photos, elevations, mileage, and GPS coordinates
{{Authority control Humboldt–Toiyabe National Forest Mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert Mountain ranges of Nevada Mountain ranges of Clark County, Nevada Mountain ranges of the Great Basin