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Looking eastward across the Mono Basin we see the beginning of the Basin and Range Province that stretches from the eastern edge of the Sierra across Nevada to central Utah. The Great Basin Desert, it's mountain ranges, and it's sagebrush oceans dominate the Intermountain West.
The Great Basin Desert derives its name from John Fremont's 1845 explorations of the West. Fremont searched in vain for a river leading to the Pacific Ocean, but eventually discovered that the landscape here was a gigantic enclosed basin with no outlet to the sea. Although the name suggests a single basin, the Great Basin contains nearly 150 basins and 160 mountain ranges. |