The northern section of Highway 8A

Signs at the turn-off from westbound 140 to SRs 8A and 34A

Well, I finally did it! I traveled the northern section of Nevada S.R. 8A, which runs from the NV-CA stateline east of Cedarville, CA, to Nevada S.R. 140, the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway. I posted earlier about the west end of northern 8A here, here, and here. The northeast end of northern 8A was covered briefly in this post, which is part of a series about Highway 140. The traverse described in this post was part of a larger loop trip from northern Nevada to northern California, the westbound portion of which is shown in this map (also embedded at the bottom).

Take the left fork to stay on 8A, or the right fork for 34A.

Looking southeast across Echo Creek at Gooch Table.

Volcanic tableland in the foreground. The Pine Forest Range is on the right; the Pueblo Mountains near Denio are on the left.

The sky was overcast for much of the trip, so the photos I got were not as good as they might have been on a bright summer day. Wildflowers were out—not a superbloom but quite persistent and with numerous species—and I saw three pronghorn in the west-central part of the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge.

One pronghorn barely visible. The south end of Gooch Table is to the left; the hills beyond the pronghorn are northern slopes off Fish Creek Mountain.

As the northern slopes of Fish Creek Mountain came into view, the area started looking familiar, and I wondered if I'd bushwhacked through the mountain mahogany on Fish Creek Mountain during a long-ago deer-hunting adventure. Also, I was now coming into the area where the Stolpas got in trouble in the winter of  '92-93. Beyond the pronghorn in the photo above, more or less just beyond the area between that dark volcanic flow and the mountain-mahogany-covered hills, the land slopes east into the upper drainage of Hell Creek, where Jim and Jennifer took refuge in a small cave approximately two miles east of Blowout Mountain. Hell Creek drains into Virgin Creek, eventually into the area of the Virgin Valley opal mines, where they might have found people, had they been able to continue their long trek through the snow. Instead, Jim walked 40 miles or so to Vya, where he luckily found someone at or near the road maintenance station.

Two pronghorn.

The road, 8A, is wide and graveled, quite smooth over most of its length, though it was decidedly dusty. At the north end, the gravel included oversize rocks that make for a rough ride in places. I had the AC on high and recirculate throughout the dirt portion of my trip (from NV 140  to CA 299) to keep the cabin pressurized; otherwise I was breathing in a lot of dust. Every time I'd stop, the dust would move over me from the rear, and I'd have to wait to take photos. The dust, in the mostly still air, was drafting along with the Jeep in lieu of any wind blowing it to one side or the other. By the way, it's always good to check your air filter after a trip through such volumes of dust, or even during if the silt is particularly nasty.

Mesa at the south end of Fish Creek Table.

And then, having passed from northwestern Humboldt County to northern Washoe County, and having also passed out of the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge, I finally turned onto a side road for lunch. Lunch was accompanied by a short wildflower walkabout.

Moving on from lunch, I came to the fast, western section of road approaching Vya. Finally, the sun came out.

Looking west toward Vya: The playas of Middle & West Lakes are in the center, with Massacre Lake behind the hill on the right. The dark knob on the left is Painted Point.

The 8A portion of the larger trip, from its junction at the north end with Nevada S.R. 140 to the NV-CA stateline where the road becomes CA 299, took about two and a half hours, including several brief photo stops and a 20-minute lunch stop. Google has one traveling that route (63 miles) at an average speed of 18 mph, whereas my average speed including more than 20 minutes of down time, was 25 mph. Before leaving, I had calculated that Google was giving me a rate of 17 mph just for the 140 to Vya section, but apparently they think the entire 8A section is a drag. In winter, of course, one might not be able to traverse the road at all, what with all that volcanic-derived silt turning to sticky, slippery mud, or the plateau country becoming buried or drifted during any serious snowstorm.

Wildflowers near the junction of 8A and 34 south of Vya.

As mentioned earlier, I've been up in the Sheldon country before, most notably many years ago for black powder deer hunting. We were probably somewhere over in the Fish Creek Mountain – Blowout Mountain area, or perhaps a bit to the south down near Mahogany Mountain.

More about 8A at LFD:

Highway 8A

Highways 8, 8A, and 8B

all posts tagged 8A

Note: a few photos shown on the map didn't make it to this post.

Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 1

We began our northern Nevada road trip about a month ago at this blog post about Sulphur, Nevada, a real ghost town located more or less a third of the way along our route. To continue with the trip, we’ll take a step back for a re-start in Winnemucca (The Griddle, above is a good place to stop for breakfast or lunch), though we could just as easily start somewhere to the east, say Elko, although the trip then would become longer. Our goal will be to make it, eventually, to the NV-CA state line west of the Smoke Creek Desert, and from there to U.S. Route 395 north of Susanville. We'll get to 395 by way of a fairly obscure dirt road that will take us from the Smoke Creek Desert in Nevada to a nearly non-place called Viewland, CA. See my Google Maps plot of this route, along with photo locations and other points of interest along the way. I'll add points to the map as our trip progresses.

The Jungo Road (Nevada S.R. 49 and 48) will be our gateway to the Black Rock Desert and points west, and to get on the Jungo Road we'll take U.S. Route 95 north out of the center of Winnemucca a very short distance, where we'll turn left onto the Jungo Road almost immediately after crossing the Humboldt River. Right at the Winnemucca convention center, essentially our starting point, you’ll note a sign stating that the road north (U.S. 95) is part of the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway.

Photo from Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway: An Outcrop.

If you're inclined to travel northward instead of westward, have a look at my 2010 Oregon Trip Series, a series dedicated to road tripping over a portion of the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway and other roads as well.

Lo and behond, the Jungo Road starts out paved as it leaves Winnemucca. That’s Blue Mountain nearly straight down the road.

At this point, just about 6 miles into our journey, we get a good view of Little Tabletop Mountain, which is a basalt-capped mesa south of the road. MOH and I used to call these hills “The Pancakes.” From the south side, they look a little like a tilted stack of pancakes.

"The Pancakes" from the south, as seen in Google Earth.

It’s difficult to get a photo of these hills when driving 80 mph on I-80, unless you happen to be sitting in the left passenger backseat, so I resorted to a G.E. view.

Before long, the paved portion of the Jungo Road ends; it becomes a magnesium-chloride treated road...a magged road. I figured the magged road condition would extend all the way out to the Hycroft gold mine, but I forgot that they are not operating with a large crew like they were a few years ago when the mine was active. Hycroft is still running their heap-leach operation while testing the feasibility of operating a sulfide leach pad, but the large crews are a thing of the past, at least for now (see Hycroft’s January 10th press release [pdf] for more about sulfide leach testing).

Here we are at the same locality as the previous photo, about 9 miles west of Winnemucca, looking back towards Winnemucca and the Sonoma Range.

The magged part of the Jungo Road currently ends at the turnoff to the Blue Mountain geothermal field, aka Blue Mountain Faulkner 1, which is just on the west side of Blue Mountain. Magging prevents dust, so the road is dusty to the west. One good thing about dust: you have a better chance of seeing that someone is heading toward you. A bad thing about dust: breathing it, of course. Magged roads have one particular disadvantage: they are very slippery when wet, almost like driving on greased snot!

Although the sign at the turnoff to the geothermal field says "NGP Blue Mountain 1 LLC," the power plant is now owned by AltaRock (or not - UPDATE 15June2019). The field was discovered during gold exploration conducted in the 1980s or 90s.

I often stop on a small-looking playa near Jungo—it seems to be a good spot for a pit stop, being about 1 coffee from Winnemucca, and when it’s hot, which it was on June 15th when these photos were taken, it’s definitely time for more hydration. It turns out that this playa is the southern part of the larger Desert Valley playa, which extends 46 miles north-northeast from about 6 miles south of Jungo, all the way to the Quinn River about half way between Winnemucca and Denio. Desert Valley is the 10-mile-wide basin between the Jackson Mountains on the west and the Slumbering Hills (a mountain range) on the east. The Sleeper gold mine was named for it's location in the Slumbering Hills (and also because it was a "sleeper?").

Here we are coming into Jungo, which is a railroad siding located at or near the junction of the Jungo Road with the Bottle Creek Road, which heads up toward the Bottle Creek mining district and the main part of Desert Valley. The well-bedded rocks in the hills ahead of us—a northward continuation of the Antelope Range or a southern part of the Jackson Mountains—are part of the Jungo Terrane, a thick pile of turbiditic shales with sandstone and limestone interbeds that were deposited in Late Triassic to Early or Middle Jurassic time (Luddington et al, 1996 and Crafford, 2007).

Not recognizing in the moment the exact location of Jungo, I took a photo of the junction with the dirt road that comes up with Imlay. If you happen to start this trek in Imlay, you'll cross the Humboldt River just above Rye Patch Reservoir, and you'll pass by Haystack Butte, a geographic marker that can be seen from the Applegate Trail.

I don’t do it often, but on this trip I went ahead and took a couple photos of two of the old mining cabins at Mandalay Spring. I’m not sure why these shacks are present (besides the spring) or what era they date from. I’ve been inside at least one of them—for some reason the entire enterprise struck me as depressing (maybe it was the peeling wallpaper or strings of disintegrating clothes; maybe it was just me).

This cabin is located a little closer to the spring and at about the same elevation; whereas the first cabin sits up above overlooking the spring.

I took this photo at one of the first spots to pull over and get a good look at the Black Rock Desert, which on this day was partly obscured by summer haze. Black Rock Point, for which the desert was named, is a small, dark hill just to the left of the road as it points off toward the vast playa; a closer view of the point can be seen here. The little hill in the foreground is part of a Pleistocene Lake Lahontan shoreline. There was another obvious shoreline just 200 m east of this smaller one.

We'll end this part of our trek at Pulpit Rock.

Google Maps location map.

Selected References:
Crafford, A.E.J., 2007, Geologic Map of Nevada: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 249, 1 CD-ROM, 46 p., 1 plate.

Ludington, Steve, McKee, E.H., Cox, D.P., Moring, B.C., and Leonard, K.R., 1996, Pre-Tertiary geology of Nevada, Chapter 4 in Singer, D.A., ed., An analysis of Nevada's metal-bearing mineral resources: Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Open-File Report 96-2, p. 4.1-4.17, 1 sheet, scale 1:1,000,000.

Highways 8, 8A, and 8B

While already busy on the Tuscarora Loop series, which I hope won't be posted in too sporadic a fashion, I noticed that I'm practically living on old Highway 8A!! (How did I not notice this before now??)

Nevada state highways 8, 8A, and 8B used to be a semi-contiguous set of routes that ran from Tonopah to Austin (8A, now S.R. 376), Austin to Battle Mountain (8A, now S.R. 305), Winnemucca to McDermitt (8, now U.S. 95), Winnemucca to Paradise in Paradise Valley (8B, now S.R. 290), and all across northwest Nevada: from between Paradise Hill and Orovada to Denio on what is now S.R. 140, part of the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway, and then from Denio or Denio Junction to the California state line near Vya, on what is partly S.R. 140 and mostly an unmarked but possibly still locally signed portion of 8A. This latter portion of 8A, located almost entirely in northern Washoe County, has not been numbered on state roadmaps since 1981.

1929 Nevada Highway Map,
with the first appearance of S.R. 8 and S.R. 8A.
1932 NV Highway Map,
with the first appearance of S.R. 8B.

Highway 8B is shown with varying lengths, sometimes not making it quite to the town of Paradise, sometimes making it to Paradise, and sometimes making it some undefined or variable short distance beyond Paradise.

1939 NV Highway Map,
the last year S.R. 8 was shown for what is now U.S. 95.
1967 NV Highway Map,
the last year S.R. 8A was shown for what is now S.R. 140.
1978-79 NV Highway Map,
showing old and new numbers for 8A, 8B, and 140.
1980-81 NV Highway Map, showing old and new numbers for
8A and 8B, but S.R. 140 is back to it's usual self.
1982 NV Highway Map: all the old numbers of our favorite
roads are gone, replaced by the new ones.
2011-2012 Nevada Highway Map,
the current map.

As far as the maps go, rather than just the highways, a few things are noteworthy: at least one Indian reservation has shrunk over the years, according to these maps, and "DANGER" areas (military bases or withdrawals), which were shown as zero on the 1929 map, have increased over the years, including an increase in the Fallon area on the 2011-2012 map as compared to the the 1982 map.

Oh, and the last time Winnemucca Lake was shown on these highway maps (instead of Winnemucca Dry Lake), was in 1940, though elsewhere it is said to have dried up in the 1930's, more specifically, by 1938. The lake dried up as a result of the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, specifically the building of Derby Dam in 1905, which diverted water from the Truckee River into the drainage of the Carson (to irrigate Fernley and Fallon). Additionally, at some point after the lake dried up, Mud Lake Slough, the spillover to Winnemucca Lake from Pyramid Lake, was blocked, reportedly by Highway 34, now S.R. 447, an assertion confirmed rather obliquely here in Note 29, giving no timeframe for the action.

Links to all Historical Nevada Highway Maps.

Onward to Winnemucca!

Nevada S.R. 140, part of the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway, leaves Denio Junction for Winnemucca by turning southward, where it almost immediately cuts across a flat area — apparently known as "Antelope" — to head straight for Denio Summit. During our 2010 Oregon roadtrip, I forgot to schedule a stop just before the summit to see Lockwood's graphic granite locality, so MOH and I just breezed on through (darn!).
After crossing the Pine Forest Range at Denio Summit, the road shoots southeast across the northeast arm of the Black Rock Desert, coming within about a mile of Quinn River Crossing (MSRMaps location). Along this entire stretch of 140, you can look south to southwest into the the Black Rock Desert across the ranch lands and alfalfa fields of several historic and active ranches. That's part of the Pine Forest Range on the right side of the photo, and that's the Jackson Mountains on the left.

View Quinn River Crossing in a larger map
NE arm of the Black Rock Desert.

The shadows were impressive as we drove by the east side of the Jackson Mountains: Black Butte, a small cuesta in the foreground, is just eclipsing the rounded, more distant Bottle Hill. (MSRMaps location.)

The Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway, by the time it crosses the Quinn River north of the Jackson Mountains (a crossing I somehow missed), has turned east-southeast to head for its junction with Highway 95.
Nevada S.R. 140 officially ends at the junction of U.S. 95, but the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway continues south, joining 95. This sign, honoring two rodeo cowgirls, is located just south of the junction; it's one of Winnemucca's many advertising billboards.

The city of Winnemucca has had quite a self-advertising campaign over the years, with odd to funny signs. Here's one from the Wisconsin Community Development Photo Archive. Other signs said things like:

Winnemucca. Where Life Begins!
Winnemucca. 5 Billion People Haven't Been There. [or "Here"??]
Winnemucca. The City by Battle Mountain.

I don't know how many of these signs, and others from that earlier era known as the eighties, are still extant.
About 15 miles north of Winnemucca, the road crosses a field of parabolic dunes coming from Lahontan lake beds or deltas near or around the alkali flats of Desert Valley at least 40 miles to the west. In fact, the entire length of the dune field is at least 55 miles, depending on where exactly in Desert Valley the field actually begins.

View dune field in a larger map

Our arrival in Winnemucca, after driving past the junction commemorating the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway, was unremarkable and unrecorded; after checking in, we immediately went to one of the Basque watering holes restaurants for wine and vittles.

Read a little more about the Nevada portion of Highway 140 here, including some history about Quinn River Crossing and where to find some opal.

Onward to Denio Junction!

As a special winter treat, we're going back to the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway, the next-to-last leg of last summer's Oregon trip, from the Highway 8A turnoff to Cedarville, CA, to that long awaited medium-sized Nevada town of Winnemucca, making it to Denio Junction in this post. (No snow in these pictures!) There are plenty of things to see along this part of the road, including exposures of possible rhyolite, dark brown with swirled flow foliation (left photo), and white to buff lacustrine to alluvial sediments (right photo). The volcanic flow that's being observed from about this location in Street View is shown on an embedded Google Maps view below. There may be one or more small faults in the sedimentary section seen in the right photo, but the angle on Google Street View makes that assessment unsure. I recommend stopping if there is a good pullover. (Interesting to even consider evaluating possible faults in the roadcut using Street View.)

View volcanic flow in a larger map

At long last we make it into the small town of...
...Denio Junction! I've never stopped here, so can't tell you much about the place, but it looks like a small oasis in the desert, and an oasis is almost always a good thing.
At the junction, Highway 140, AKA the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway, turns south (despite the sign that says "straight ahead" to Winnemucca), and a short spur S.R. 292 goes north to Denio on the Nevada-Oregon border, crossing into Oregon as Highway 205. (MSRMaps location.)

We should make it into Winnemucca this coming Monday! (Stay tuned.)

Highway 8A: The Cutoff from Cedarville to the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway

After traveling past the Deep Creek Falls pullout, past Adel, Oregon, and onward past marshes or reservoirs, past interesting but unknown volcanic geology, and over at least two summits...
...we finally came into Nevada...
...and shortly came to the turnoff that was one of the primary purposes for taking the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway back into Nevada, instead of another, much shorter route. That turnoff is the north end of Highway 8A as it still exists today. Highway Eight A, Yay!
The sign says, "Cedarville: 71 miles." There is pavement in Cedarville, CA, west to the Nevada border, but none beyond that, and none from this turnoff south to the Nevada border.
Will we see a sign proclaiming the road as S.R. 8A? We turned south near this mini-kiosk for the Sheldon Antelope Wildlife Refuge to find out.
Looking to the south, it became apparent that this fine-looking dirt road isn't signed 8A from the north end, though it may still be signed 8A from the southwest end, just east of Cedarville, CA, in Nevada where this portion of old Highway 8A starts. (Where does a road start or end? This one starts in CA, goes northeast to the former continuation of 8A and 8, which are now Highway 140 and Highway 95, not entirely respectively, also part of the Winnemuccca-to-the-Sea Highway.)
Current signs indicate that the road — the entire remaining portion of Highway 8A — is "Not Regularly Maintained" and is "Closed in Winter." I suspect that the road is actually open during the winter (not blocked) but that it isn't plowed, can drift shut or get completely buried during snowstorms, and may turn muddy. I also suspect that the sign is there to indicate that people without backcountry experience or who are unfamiliar with the area are not advised to enter, especially in winter. This signage may have something to do with a winter saga that turned out okay, but looked bleak for a while. The last time this road was marked 8A on Nevada road maps was in 1980-1981.

[Note: if the Stolpa's indeed headed due east from the place they abandonded their truck on Highway 8A some unknown miles east of the non-town of Vya, NV, as reported, they would have eventually hooked up with the north-south portion of Highway 140 where it is part of Highway 95 — after crossing 50 miles of rugged canyon country while going entirely against the grain of canyons and mountains. Possibly they could have veered northward toward Gridley Lake, where there may be some active ranches; had they continued due east, they would have either had to cross the Pine Forest Range or, if veering southward to avoid that range, they would have ended up in the northeast arm of the Black Rock Desert, where there might also be active ranches.]

Sidebar: The Kims

View "Points on 8A" in a Larger Map

Points on 8A (above): Point A, the NV-CA state line; Point B, near Vya, NV; Point C, random location on 8A, possibly a good truck-abandoning location (NOT!); Point D, 8A joins 140. (Update: These points can currently only be seen by clicking through to Google Maps; 24Sept2014)

The earlier sign, before the turnoff, essentially indicates that it's 71 miles southwest from the junction of Highways 140 and 8A to the nearest services in Cedarville, CA, unless, of course, you happen to be going to Gerlach, NV, in which case services are a mite farther south. The longest interval of no services that I've noticed recently says 163 miles, leaving Tonopah to the east on Route 6, going toward Warm Springs and the so-called E.T. Highway.
We turned around, being entirely unprepared to drive so far out of our way and shortly running out of trip time...
...and continued our wayward journey toward Winnemucca on the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway.

To be continued...