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Carlin
Canyon
'It
All Comes Together Here'
Elko County, Nevada
While
sitting
on top of the hill, from where the following photographs were taken, the thought came
to mind that "it all comes together here." A chapter of the
earth's history together with many of the accomplishments
of human kind have been recorded in this canyon. In this canyon you can
see long extinct fossil coral, brachiopod shells, crinoid stems, and bryozoans that
lived in ancient oceans. Here you can also trace mans "progress" from
seeing white chert flakes that were created in the making of arrow head points
by the native American Indians, the canyon contains the history of the explorers and trappers, the history of the emigrants as they
passed through this canyon in covered wagons, the railroads which allowed
emigrants headed to California "to travel 15 miles per hour in the 'relative
comfort' of a train car instead of 15 miles per day by wagon". The history of
the automobile from the Victory Highway, to US 40, to the two-lane divided
highway of Interstate 80. The power lines and phone lines pass through
this notch. And within the last few years, fiber-optic cables were
buried through the canyon. Their location marked with little red plastic
poles. Perhaps this web-page traveled from Spring Creek's Mighty Moose server
through Carlin Canyon to your computer. All of this history is packed
into a 2-mile stretch (less than a 2 minute drive) of I-80.
Why
does it all come together here? The mountains of the Basin and Range Province
trend north-south. The Humboldt River cuts an east-west notch through
these mountains that allowed the 'path of least resistance west'. This
together with water and vegetation for the animals, provided by the Humboldt
River, made this the best route west. Here in Carlin Canyon, the
Humboldt River has cut a narrow canyon. All the trails and rails
converge here.
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Carlin Canyon looking West |
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Carlin Canyon Looking East |
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West Carlin Canyon - Looking North |
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Survey Mark No. 63 on top of Carlin Tunnels |
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West Side of Carlin Tunnels |
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East Side of Carlin Tunnels |
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"The Rocks Tell The Story" The
Diamond Peak Formation of Upper Mississippian Age is referred to below
as the "yellowish-black pebbly rocks at the bottom of the
hill". The younger overlying Strathearn Formation of Upper
Pennsylvanian age is the "gray limestone layers". The
geology of this area has been studied many times. The US
Geological Survey with the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology prepared
a 1975 professional paper covering this area. It is
technical, but excellent reading. It is referenced below. |
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The following series was taken directly
from a sign in Carlin Canyon. |
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"Long, long ago, before dinosaurs roamed the
land there was an ocean where you are now standing. Stones and
boulders from the nearby mountains washed into the ocean in long
horizontal bands. Eventually, these rocks were cemented together
to form the yellowish-black pebbly rocks at the bottom of the
hill."
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"But the bands aren't horizontal anymore.
How did that happen? Faulting is the answer. Faulting, and
associated earthquakes, shook this area and tipped the massive block
containing these bands. One end of this block moved up and the
other down tilting the bands and, over time, forming a new mountain
range." |
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"Over millions of years wind and water eroded
the upper end of the block. Sea levels rose, covering the eroded
surface with a warm, shallow ocean. In the ocean, sediments were
deposited gradually, forming the gray limestone layers now visible at
the top of the hill." |
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"The layering of limestone over the older
eroded block records a gap in this portion of the earth's
history. This gap is called an unconformity. Because the
yellowish-black rocks meet the gray limestone at an angle geologists
call this an angular unconformity.
The ocean has been gone for millions of years now;
the land has continued to change. More faulting tilted the gray
limestone layers and further tipped the pebbly bands. This
faulting and continued erosion created the rounded hills and river
canyon you see today."
The Ferdelford fossil bed is located in the canyon
in the Diamond Peak Formation shown toward the center of the above
photo. It contains a large variety of Corals, Bryozoans,
Echinoderm, brachiopods, Pelecypods and Gastopods. Over time the
fossil bed has been heavily collected, but fossils can still be
seen. A list of the fossil names are provided in the
professional paper, number 867-A, referenced below. |
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The Humboldt River |
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| The "Humboldt river meanders a distance of 350 miles from
headwaters in Elko County to its termination in an alkali sink, the
fate of all Great Basin rivers.
This was the last discovered of the American rivers, first named
for Peter Skene Ogden, trapper and explorer. It was then called
Mary's River after Ogden's Indian wife: the Barren River for its
lack of trees, then placed on maps as Humboldt, namesake of Alexander
von Humboldt.
The Humboldt traces an east-west arc through Nevada's
north-south oriented mountain ranges and its river plain was the route
for emigrants heading to California. It's maligned waters
alkaline, brackish and sometime non-existent, sustained grasses that
allowed traveler's animals to survive the desert journey.
Its sink, near present day Lovelock, marked the beginning of yet
another perilous leg of the emigrants journey, the 40-mile desert." |
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Explores and Trappers |
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"Europeans had lived in the New World for 300 years before they
made trails along the Humboldt River. Peter Skene Ogden and his
British fur brigade were the first to meet the native Shashone. The
trappers passed this site going east in 1828. In 1833 an
American fur party led by Joseph Walker trapped in the
area." (photo, courtesy of California State
Library, text taken from road sign at Hunter Overpass) |
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The Emigrants and Settlers |
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"During the 1840's the shouts of men and the
creaks of harness and wagon became common as the great migration west
began. It stared in 1841 when the Bidwell-Bartleson party became
the first emigrant group to thread its way thorough Carlin
Canyon. Two years later the Walker-Chiles party, traversing the
California Trail from Ft. Hall, Idaho, rolled the first wagons into
view. Over the next several years, hundreds of thousands of men,
women and children bound for California and western Nevada passed this
way.
As California grew, the wagon traffic to Sacramento
increased. Winter snows often blocked the rough wagon road
through the Canyon. Other routes were sought for a permanent
road west and for a transcontinental railroad, but Carlin Canyon
remained part of the major route across northern Nevada."
(photo, courtesy of California State
Library, and text taken from road sign at picnic area in Carlin
Canyon) |
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The
dated entry below is from the diary of Hiram Miller and James F. Reed.
This
information is COPIED DIRECTLY from the linked Donner Party Site.
Make sure you check-out Daniel
M. Rosen's site it is great!
The Donner party passed through Carlin Canyon on:
Sunday,
September 27, 1846
"Marys River, Son 27 Came through a Short
Cannon and encamped above the first Creek (after the Cannon) on Marys
River" [This camp was probably on present Susie Creek, also
called Moleen Canyon, below Carlin, Nevada.]
A pretty terse description of the canyon? If
you had just traveled the Hasting Cut-off, this was just another
canyon. |
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The Railroad |
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"The ring of picks, shovels, and sledgehammers
echoed through Carlin Canyon in late 1868, as Chinese laborers leveled
the road bed and spiked down the Central Pacific railroad
tracks. For the next 35 years steam engine whistles resounded
through the canyon. By 1903 the curving tracks had been rerouted
through a tunnel eliminating the slow crawl along the
river." (photo, courtesy of Northeastern Nevada Museum, and
text taken from road sign at picnic area in Carlin Canyon) |
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The Automobile |
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"When the automobile became popular in the 1920s,
motorists could drive State Route 1 through Carlin Canyon, following
the paths of the emigrants and the railroad. The route became
known as the Victory Highway in 1924, only to be renamed U.S. Highway
40 a year later. In the 1930s men from the Civilian Conservation
Corp built the rock wall to protect the highway. Today cars and
trucks bypass Carlin Canyon in the same manner as the railroads."
(photo, courtesy of Wright Motors, Elko, Nevada, and text
taken from road sign at picnic area in Carlin Canyon)
Highway 40, pictured here, was built on the old
abandoned railroad grade through Carlin Canyon. |
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University
of Nevada Reno Fire Academy, just west of Carlin Canyon
(see
photo at top of page) |
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Links
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Nevada
Counties
Humboldt County is Nevada's oldest
county, created by the Utah Territorial Legislature in 1856. It
was also one of Nevada's original nine counties created in 1861.
Named for the Humboldt River which John C. Fremont named after
Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt, a German
naturalist, traveler and statesman. Humboldt NEVER saw the places
that bear his name. |
History
-- Humboldt County
Humboldt County was created on November 25, 1861
as one of the original nine counties of the Territory of Nevada.
The county shares its name with the Humboldt River, which passes
through northern Nevada and the southeastern portion of Humboldt
County. Peter Ogden of the Hudson Bay Company first discovered
the river on November 9, 1828 on his fifth Snake Country
Expedition. The river was named by soldier-explorer John C.
Fremont for Alexander von Humboldt, the German explorer and
scientist, who was much admired by Fremont, but who never saw or
came within 1,000 miles of the river, mountains or county which
now bear his name. During the period 1841-1870, the Humboldt
River funneled thousands of emigrants along its valley on their
way to California, especially after the discovery of gold there
in 1848. |
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THE
GREAT BASIN
Gary
B. Peterson
Utah History Encyclopedia
John C. Frémont's major government exploring
expeditions of 1843-44 and 1845 crossed the Basin by both
Smith's and Walker's routes. The Unknown, Mary's, or Ogden's
River was renamed by Frémont for the famous German geographer
and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. |
Elko,
Nevada Time-Line
Vivian
Tonka
Wagons
Ho!
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References:
Smith Jr., J. Fred and Ketner, Keith B., 1975, Stratigraphy of Paleozoic Rocks
in the Carlin-Pinon Range Area, Nevada, US Geological Survey Professional Paper
867-A.
Photographs:
The above photos are thumb-nailed. The original digital photos are
available on request.
Additional Information: Northeastern
Nevada Museum
© 2001 - Elko Rose Garden Association
Recent Photos by Dan Turner
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