Believing In Place: A Spiritual Geography Of The Great Basin

1. Landscape and Storytelling

✹ In early October of 1881, three passengers gazed from a train rolling westward through Nevada. Although they had spent many hours on the California -bound train together, the three did not know each other and had nothing in common. One was a Paiute Indian ranch worker who, by virtue of birthright in an agreement with the Central Pacific Railroad,1 was riding free of charge to a ranch near Walker Lake. The second passenger was a mining engineer headed for the silver mines at Virginia City in Nevada’s recently fabled, but now declining, Comstock Mining District. Armed with geological surveys and mining reports, the mining engineer hoped to “breathe new life” into one of the mines there. That would involve exploring the secrets hidden deep within Mount Davidson—secrets that yielded both mineral wealth and knowledge of nature’s inner workings. The third passenger, an English-born farmer from Utah Territory, was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Bound for a religious assignment in the Pacific Northwest, this Mormon missionary would take the train across the entire width of the Great Basin, ride it over the Sierra Nevada mountain range into California’s golden Central Valley, and then continue northward by train and stagecoach to ultimately reach Oregon. The three travelers were traversing the Great Basin, a vast area of desert -mountain topography where vistas are immense and the works of man almost inconsequential. For much of their route across Nevada, they had followed the westward-flowing Humboldt River, which the mining engineer recognized as unique, if not peculiar. Unlike rivers elsewhere, the Humboldt never reached the sea. Instead, it terminated in a broad sink rimmed by distant mountains that remained snow-capped until midsummer . Although lined by trees in a few places, the Humboldt River ran through what travelers called the “Great American Desert”2 in the 1880s. Unobstructed by trees, the sagebrush-covered landscape here stretches outward to the rugged mountains that define every horizon (fig. 1.1). Landscape and Storytelling 1 1 Francaviglia/1-38 6/9/03 6:35 PM Page 1 As the train emerged from the sinuous Humboldt River Valley, it moved south into an immense desert area. Lulled by the late summer heat and the steady rhythm of the wheels marking their passage over each joint in the rails, the three passengers found it difficult to stay awake as the train rattled through the late afternoon. Then one thing momentarily united them without a word being spoken. By coincidence, all three focused their attention on a large rock-studded mountain range that loomed in the distance to the south. The slanting rays of the sun illuminated the mountains’ steep western flanks a copper hue that contrasted with the cobalt blue of the cloudless sky. The mountain range they beheld was one of many that run in roughly north-south, each bordering a long valley. This is “basin and range” country whose alternating mountains and valleys give the landscape a decidedly corrugated quality. Travelers through the Great Basin might agree with a railroad historian who recently characterized the topography as looking as if “God had dragged a rake and left furrows over the land.”3 To the mining engineer and the Mormon farmer, this landscape’s vegetation seemed bleak. The Mormon’s roots were originally in a better-watered place, but now those roots would have to rely on diverted water; building on 2 | believing in place Fig. 1.1. Enigmatic River: Weaving between sagebrush-covered plains and mountain ranges, the Humboldt River flows westward across a portion of the Great Basin . Scene near Mill City, Nevada, looking toward the Humboldt Range. (May 2000 photograph by author) Francaviglia/1-38 6/9/03 6:36 PM Page 2 landscape and storytelling | 3 the experience and memory of Mormon ancestors who had settled parts of this desert region for more than thirty years, the Mormon farmer approached the desert landscape with the idea of converting it into a garden. The mining engineer descended from a rich European scientific tradition in geological observation that spanned about a century and a half; expertise learned in these pursuits was helping to distinguish the Great Basin as one of the West’s richest mining areas. But it was still bleak country that they beheld: Away from the Humboldt River Valley there was not a tree in sight as far as...