Nevada

Nevada is the driest state in the country, most of it locked inside the Great Basin — a vast region where no rivers reach the sea and water that falls either sinks into the ground or evaporates from shallow desert lakes. The terrain is unmistakable: dozens of north-south mountain ranges rise like islands from flat desert valleys in the classic basin-and-range pattern, repeating across the state. It is also the most mountainous of the desert states, with more named ranges than any other.

Rain shadows from the Sierra Nevada to the west wring the moisture from incoming storms, leaving Nevada parched. Boundary Peak, the high point at 13,147 feet (4,007 m), stands near that western wall. The Colorado River clips the southern tip, where Hoover Dam's reservoir, Lake Mead, makes Las Vegas possible — a neon city improbably blooming in the Mojave Desert. Most Nevadans live in the Las Vegas and Reno areas, leaving the desert interior among the emptiest country in the lower 48.