The Great Basin

The Great Basin is an enormous region of interior drainage covering most of Nevada and parts of Utah, California, Oregon, and Idaho — a place defined by the fact that no water leaves it for the ocean. Rain and snow that fall here either sink into the ground or collect in shallow desert lakes and salt flats and evaporate. It is the largest area of internal drainage in North America, and the cold, high desert that fills it is the Great Basin Desert.

The landscape is the textbook example of basin-and-range country: dozens of long, narrow mountain ranges running north–south, separated by flat desert valleys, repeating across the region like ripples. It holds the remnants of vast Ice Age lakes — the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats are leftovers of one — and ancient bristlecone pines, the oldest living trees on Earth, cling to its highest ranges.

• Great Salt Lake
  The largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere contains
• Nevada
  The Silver State, the driest in the nation located in
• Utah
  The Beehive State, red rock and the Great Salt Lake located in
• The Basin and Range
  The stretched crust of parallel desert ranges and valleys related