Hi jo_anne_young,
Wyoming OutDoor Council - Red Desert - Defining the Red Desert
http://www.wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org/programs/reddesert/definition.php
Called the Great American Desert by pioneers, the Red Desert is a vast
expanse of high altitude dry land covered in sagebrush, beauteous land
spectacles, and wildlife. Where is the Red Desert? There has amassed
some confusion about where the desert lies because the term has been
used interchangeably to describe the Jack Morrow Hills planning area.
Conservationist did this to counter a trend in the naming of planning
areas that draw public attention away from the romance and mystique of
the land.
Jack Morrow was a criminal and thief, who shot and killed his way
through the area. Some of the more honorable outlaws of the time also
used this land, including Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid. The Red
Desert is not limited to the 620,000-acre Jack Morrow Hills study
area. The Red Desert encompasses millions of acres including: much of
the Rock Springs Field Office, the western half of the Great Divide
(Rawlins) Field Office, and a small portion of Northern Colorado (see
map).
The earliest description of the Red Desert we know of comes from a
USDA publication in 1898, titled "The Red Desert of Wyoming and its
Forage Resources." This publication described the Red Desert as
extending from the North Platte to the Green River, with the south
boundary as the Wyoming state line. An additional 1898 article in
Recreation Magazine by Dr. Frank Dunham contains a rough map and a
reference to a "tract of country marked the red desert" in Northern
Sweetwater County.
A more recent conception of the Red Desert derives from the BLM's "Red
Desert Study" (circa 1974), which covered the Great Divide Basin north
of Interstate 80. There is no indication that this study was ever
intended to delineate the extent of the Red Desert itself; boundaries
shown are merely the boundaries of the study, not the Desert itself.
It would not make a lot of sense to bound a geographic unit such as
the Red Desert by an arbitrary man-made feature such as I-80 which
wasn't built until the 1960s.
To further cloud the issue, there is a much smaller Red Desert Basin
that is officially recognized by the USGS.
In 2000 the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance defined the boundary of
the Greater Red Desert proper based on ecological characteristics. The
boundary they established encompasses the entire Great Divide Basin
plus the Washakie Basin. It is bounded on the north by the north leg
of the Continental Divide, on the east by the eastern boundary of the
Great Divide Basin and the Atlantic Rim massif, on the west by the
western boundary of the Great Divide Divide Basin and the Pine
Mountain-Quaking Aspen Mountain range, and on the south by the bluffs
above the Little Snake River at the northern edge of Colorado. This is
consistent with the USDA's 1898 version, except that it extends
slightly into Colorado and is smaller on the eastern and western
sides.
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Online Highways - Red Desert
http://www.ohwy.com/wy/r/reddeser.htm
The Red Desert has been described to be "like no other place on
Earth." And it is: the area comprises one among the last regions of
high desert in the US. It contains landforms such as red-bottomed
desert lakes scattered with lime colored greasewood, shifting sand
dunes and colorful badlands. The desert retains the tracks of the
Oregon and Mormon trails.
The Red Desert is one of the best examples of cold desert in the US,
if not in the world. It supports wildlife, including wild horses,
livestock, and the Sands Elk herd, the only desert elk herd in the
state.
Several proposed wilderness areas lie within the Red Desert. Among
those include the Oregon Buttes, the Pinnacles, the Red Lake, and the
Buffalo Hump and Boar's Tusk Dunes, to name a few. Located in northern
Sweetwater County.
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Wyoming Firsts, Facts, and Trivia
http://www.shgcities.com/wy/facts/
The Red Desert in south central Wyoming drains neither to the east nor
to the west. The continental divide splits and goes around the desert
on all sides leaving the basin without normal drainage.
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http://www.nwf.org/reddesert/nativeamericans.cfm
The Red Desert contains many cultural and historical sites. The
National Register of Historical Places lists more than 9,300 such
sites within the area. Native American tribes lived in much of the Red
Desert and therefore there are many sites that are important to them.
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Pioneers in the Red Desert
http://www.nwf.org/reddesert/history.cfm
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Virtual Tour of the Red Desert
http://www.nwf.org/reddesert/tour.cfm
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Animals of the Red Desert
http://www.nwf.org/reddesert/animals.cfm
The Red Desert is home to a rich variety of wildlife, with more than
350 species that call it home. Among its inhabitants are the pronghorn
anetlope, desert elk, sage grouse, burrowing owls and several species
of reptile including the eastern short-horned lizard and the midget
faded rattlesnake. Unfortunately, the problems that threaten the Red
Desert threaten its wildlife too.
There are currently 38 species of birds, mammals, fish, reptiles and
amphibians that are on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sensitive
species list. These animals are considered to be declining but are not
protected under the Endangered Species Act. Among the 38 species are
white-tailed prairie dog, the ferruginous hawk and the greater sage
grouse, all natives of the Red Desert.
(see photos, and read much more)
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The Red Desert and Native Americans
http://www.nwf.org/reddesert/nativeamericans.cfm
Across the Red Desert are campsites people used for generations.
Petroglyphs, or rock carvings by native people, show what symbols were
important to them. They are found in throughout the desert where rock
faces provide a suitable canvas. At Independence Rock, petroglyphs are
joined by the carved signatures of 19th Century emigrants using the
Oregon Trail.
The most recent Native American inhabitants were the Shoshone and Ute
peoples, although peoples from many of the "Great Basin" and Plains
tribes came through the area such as Arapaho, Lakota and Cheyenne. For
the Shoshone people, the Red Desert has two names. The first is "the
place where God ran out of mountains." The second name, "land of many
ponies," relates to the major change in native cultures caused by the
introduction of the horse. The Shoshone and the Ute tribes were among
the first to develop horse-based commerce that stretched for miles
across the Great Basin of Wyoming where the Red Desert is located.
Why is there not more information available about sites sacred to
Native American peoples? Important cultural sites have been subject to
vandalism and desecration. It is critically important for the
non-tribal public to respect the value and context of these cultural
areas. Usually, sensitive information regarding location and meaning
is only made available to enrolled tribal members and only for their
use. Tribal elders teach the ceremonies associated with each place,
but it is not information shared outside the tribe.
Steamboat Mountain is the site of an ancient Native American buffalo
jump site. Buffalo jumps were created when hunters stampeded buffalo
and drove them over cliff faces.
The Indian Gap trail is another cultural area that has been identified
by the federal government. This trail connected the Ute tribes further
west in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming to the Shoshone in the Wind River
Basin. The trail passed through gap between Essex and Steamboat
Mountains.
Other geologic sites that are culturally important to the tribes and
equally awe inspiring to non tribal members are the North and South
Table Mountains, Pilot Butte, the Honeycombs and Oregon Buttes.
Today, Native American peoples continue to value the Red Desert. In
September 2003, Shoshone and Arapaho youth in a group called the Eagle
Staff Runners Association had a run "to pay respect to their ancestral
heritage in the Red Desert." On the Wind River Reservation, activists
including former NWF board member Dick Baldes get people involved at
slide shows and traditional feasts. Native Americans testify at Bureau
of Land Management meetings and offer their expertise in many efforts
to help protect the Red Desert.
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University of Wyoming - Committee for Evolutionary & Systematic Biology
http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/Botany/cesb/
Wyoming's magnificent and varied landscape provides an ideal natural
laboratory for exploring these evolutionary and systematic interests.
Wyoming's basins and mountain ranges abound in rich fossil beds, and
its landscape ranges from extensive sagebrush steppes to alpine
summits, with extensive forests and woodlands in between. With such
wonders as the Red Desert, Grand Tetons and the magnificent ecosystem
of the Yellowstone plateau, Wyoming offers a huge variety of
ecosystems and biological and geological gradients. Wyoming is the
only state in the nation with fewer than half a million people.
Indeed, antelope very nearly outnumber humans.
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http://w3.trib.com/~leebo/carbon.htm
The Red Desert is a very unique environment which supports one of the
last remaining wild horse herds in the country.
[edit]
Since the Red Desert has vast reserves of natural gas, a major
pipeline runs parallel to the interstate through Rawlins and
compressor stations in Sinclair and Wamsutter (30 miles to the west)
assist in transporting and refining the natural gas on it's way to
markets around the country.
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http://www.sierraclub.org/specialplace/ourplaces/wy_reddesert.asp
The Red Desert is like no other place on Earth. Here, in southern
Wyoming, the Continental Divide splits to surround the Red Desert
basin which drains to neither the Atlantic nor the Pacific. The Red
Desert encompasses one of the last great undeveloped tracts of high
elevation, cold desert in the United States. The area includes
red-bottomed desert lakes dotted with bright green greasewood, barren
areas of sheet erosion and painted badlands, volcanic necks and cones,
shifting sand dunes with buried ice deposits and fossil beds from an
ancient inland sea.
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High Country News Archives: Deserts / Ecosystems
http://www.hcn.org/archivesbysubject.jsp?category=Deserts&subject=Ecosystems
September 27, 1999 - The Red Desert: Wyoming's endangered country by
Mac Blewer. Wyoming's little-known Red Desert is a unique region rich
in wildlife, history - and also in deposits of oil, gas and minerals,
which could lead to the destruction of the land under which they're
found.
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Help Keep Oil Rigs Out of Red Desert, Wyoming
http://ga1.org/alert-description.tcl?alert_id=8394
The Jack Morrow Hills are the wild heart of Wyoming's Red Desert. The
area shelters 50,000 pronghorns that comprise the largest migratory
wildlife herd in the lower 48 states. A rare desert elk herd also
ranges there, amid seven wilderness study areas and a number of sites
sacred to Native American people.
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http://www.iup.edu/geography/Faculty/LHPDF/ResourceGuide/Ch14.1%20Lincoln%20Highway%20in%20Wyoming%20Resources.pdf
Red Desert - Three Generations of Lincoln Highway, 1913, 1920, 1937.
In the vicinity of Red Desert, three generations of Lincoln Highway
run parallel to each other and tightly bundled between the Union
Pacific Railroad and Interstate 80
Best regards,
tlspiegel |
,
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