Eastern Sierra Nevada, California and Nevada
Tom Schweich
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Eastern Sierra Nevada, California and Nevada
| A Checklist Flora of the Mono Lake Basin, Mono County, California and Mineral County, Nevada. |
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Tom Schweich |
Topics in this Article: Floristic Tour of the Mono Basin Plant Collectors in the Mono Basin Checklist of the Mono Basin Flora Checklist of the Upper Mono Basin Flora Literature Cited |
(For the botanical season of 2016, I plan to make one field trip to the Mono Lake basin, the timing of which depends on how this promising El Nino season develops. I made one field trip to Mono Lake in 2015, collecting at Warm Springs, and the south side of Grant Lake, among other places. All of my collections from the Mono Lake basin have been determined and distributed to herbaria, with the exception of some willows. There are always collections of mine to identify and collections of others to review, especially while California herbaria continue to come online at the Consortium of California Herbaria. As always, comments and suggestions will be cheerfully received. Tom Schweich, February, 2016.) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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No matter how you first see it, Mono Lake will always impress. The view from Conway Summit, the descent from Tioga Pass, the bitter alkaline water, or the strange and fantastic tufa towers never fail to leave an indelible impression. Nestled into a tectonic depression, but still at a high altitude (higher than Lake Tahoe), at the boundary between the high Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin, significant botanic shifts should be visible across short horizontal distances. Things are always more exciting at the interfaces, whether we're talking about geology, botany, food or music. There's no reason why the Mono Lake basin should be any different.
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I adopted this project because it seemed that such a place needed an updated list of plants that make the basin their home. I hope that you enjoy learning about the plants of the Mono Lake basin, and that the checklist makes a valuable addition to your visit.
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I have tried to make this flora strongly collections-based, i.e., there is at least one publicly accessible collection for every taxon listed.
The Internet and online herbaria data bases, especially the Consortium of California Herbaria (ucjeps.berkeley.edu/consortium/) made this possible. I am very indebted to the University and Jepson Herbaria for making the California data available for examination in the middle of the night … while wearing my robe and pajamas, … and my bunny slippers.
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Nomenclature is intended to follow The Jepson Manual, 2nd Edition (2012), to the extent that I can keep track of it.
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| Definition of the Mono Lake Basin
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 Location of Mono Lake in the Southwest
The Mono Lake basin is a closed, internal-drainage basin located east of Yosemite National Park in California, United States.
It is also directly east of the San Francisco Bay Area, 180 miles as the California gull (Larus californicus) flies, and 232 miles by road over Tioga Pass.
It is bordered to the West by the Sierra Nevada, to the East by the Cowtrack Mountain, to the North by the Bodie Hills, and to the South by the North ridge of the Long Valley.
| The current lake surface is at an elevation of 6378 feet, higher than Lake Tahoe (elev. 6224 ft.). The waters are alkaline (pH: ˜ 10), because they contain carbonates and sulfates in addition to chlorides.
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Literature Cited:
Geologically, Bursik and Sieh (1989) describe the Mono Lake basin as the area bounded by the Bodie Hills, Cowtrack Mountain, Long Valley Caldera, and the Sierra Nevada on the north, east, south, and west.
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Literature Cited:
From a structural geology perspective, the Mono Lake basin is a down-warped structural basin bounded by flexures on the north, east, and west, and bounded by the Sierra Nevada frontal fault on the west. Structural development of the basin has occurred largely in the last 3 m. y. and is still in progress (Gilbert, C. M., M. N. Christensen, Yehya Al-Rawi, and K. R. Lajoie. 1968).
| This area of California was a passive continental margin during the Paleozoic. During the Mesozoic through about Miocene it was an active continental margin, perhaps somewhat like the west coast of South America at present. Before the Sierra orogeny (~ 3.2 ma.), it drained west through the San Joaquin River canyon.
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From a hydrographic perspective, the Mono Lake basin is defined by all streams that drain into Mono Lake. On the north, east and south, the hydrographic basin coincides roughly with the structural basin. However, on the west, the Mono Lake basin extends west of the Sierra Nevada frontal fault to the Sierra crest. Thus Tioga Pass, Mount Dana and Mount Conness are all on the western boundary of the Mono Lake basin. Major streams in the Mono Lake basin that originate in the high Sierra are Rush Creek, with tributaries Parker Creek and Walker Creek, Lee Vining Creek, and Mill Creek.
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Literature Cited:
From a biogeographical perspective, I have found no definition of Mono Lake basin. The Jepson Manual (Hickman, 1993), places the lower portions of the Mono Lake basin in East of Sierra Nevada (SNE) which includes the Sweetwater Mountains, Bridgeport Valley, Bodie, Mono Lake basin, Long Valley, and the Owens Valley. The CalFlora Ecological Sub-Units divide the basin into Northern Mono (MNOn) and Southern Mono (MNOs). These sub-units extend to the Sierra crest on the west.
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 Overview Map of Mono Lake basin
My definition of the "Mono Lake basin" includes the entire hydrographic basin, less that portion on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada above 8400 ft. (2560 m).
The separation of Upper Mono Lake basin from Mono Lake basin at 8400 feet is based upon several geographic objectives:
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Literature Cited:
Some include Alkali Valley in the Mono Lake basin, and some not. Russell (1889, 300-301) did not believe the waters of Pleistocene Lake Mono entered the present day northern part of Alkali Valley. He based his conclusion on the absence of wave cut terraces around the valley. However, Reheis, et al. (2002) show that a paleovalley, now beneath an andesite flow from Mount Hicks, could have been a spillway. This evidence is supported by presence of well rounded, polished pebbles and cobbles in a terrace below Hicks Valley. I include the northern part of Alkali Valley in my definition of the Mono Lake basin because it appears that it was filled by the waters of Pleistocene Lake Mono.
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Mono Basin.
| Floristic Research in Nearby Areas
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Locations: Sweetwater Mountains.
The Sweetwater Mountains are 20 km north of the Mono Lake basin. There are two published papers and an informal checklist of plants found there. Lavin (1983) published a paper on the floristics of the Upper Walker River, California and Nevada. Among other findings was a 90 percent floristic similarity (Sorenson's) between the Sweetwater Mountains, lying to the east of the Sierra, and the east slope of the Sierra Nevada (within the Walker River drainage), which indicates the Sweetwaters to be more affiliated with the Sierran flora instead of the Intermountain flora.
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Locations: Sweetwater Mountains.
Hunter and Johnson (1983) concentrated on the alpine flora of the Sweetwater Mountains, also finding a closer affinity between the Sweetwater Mountains and the eastern Sierra Nevada than with the Great Basin mountain ranges.
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Marty Wojciechowski (Arizona State University) prepared a checklist for a Flora of the Sweetwater Mountains Workshop sponsored by the Jepson Herbarium, University of California, Berkeley, in June 2002. I haven't seen this checklist.
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Locations: Bodie Hills.
Tim Messick wrote a flora of the Bodie Hills as his Masters thesis in 1982 at Humboldt State University. Messick's results were also aggregated into Lavin (1983) above. An abbreviated version of Messick's thesis, without references to voucher specimen numbers and individual specimen locations, is available at his web site (http://www.timmessick.com). Messick deposited 1,170 vouchers at the herbarium of Humboldt State University (HSU). While HSU is a member of the Consortium of California Herbaria, their specimen data base is not fully available online at this time (October, 2009).
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Ann Howald (1989) prepared a vegetation and flora of the Mammoth Mountain Area and followed that in 2000 with a flora of Valentine Eastern Sierra Reserve.
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Locations: Glass Mountain.
To the south of the Mono Lake basin, Michael Honer's vascular flora of the Glass Mountain region (Honer, 2001) covers a region just to the southeast of the Mono Lake basin. There is some overlap between in the areas covered by this flora and the Glass Mountain flora. In particular, the areas of Big Sand Flat and Little Sand Flat are covered by both.
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Locations: White Mountains.
Lloyd and Mitchell's (1973) Flora of the White Mountains, California and Nevada, was the first published flora of the White Mountains.
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The most recent floristic checklist of the White Mountains is Morefield, Taylor, and DeDecker (1988). The number of taxa on their checklist represented a 41.7% increase over the Lloyd and Mitchell flora of 15 years previous. At the end of field work in 1987, taxa new to the White Mountains were being discovered at a constant rate of about two every three days of work in previously unexplored areas. The authors note that the list remains far from complete and that field work continues.
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Mary DeDecker contributed Chapter 6 - Shrubs and Flowering Plants in Hall's (1991) Natural History of the White-Inyo Range. A chapter on trees was contributed by Deborah L. Elliot-Fisk and Ann M. Peterson. Timothy Spria's chapter on Plant Zones is based on Mooney's treatment in Lloyd and Mitchell (1973).
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The northern Mojave Desert, comprised of the Eureka Valley, Saline Valley, Death Valley, and Panamint Valley, and their surrounding mountains, south to the approximate border of San Bernardino County was covered by Mary DeDecker's (1984) Flora of the Northern Mojave Desert. The Mono Lake basin is separated from that area by about 50 miles including the bulk of the White Mountains.
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Simpson and Hasenstab's (2009) Cryptantha of Southern California explicitly excludes the Mono Lake basin. However, a comparison of taxa included in their paper shows that only C. ambigua is missing from the list of taxa, while 13 of the 56 taxa listed are found in the Mono Lake basin.
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| Publications about Plants in the Mono Basin
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Literature Cited:
The original work by the Mono Basin Research Group has been reported in Winkler (1977).
The plant collections were mainly by J. Burch, J. Robins, and T. Wainwright, and they deposited about 200 vouchers from around the lake at DS (Dudley Herbarium, Stanford University), which is now at CAS (California Academy of Sciences).
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Literature Cited:
Helen Constantine's (1993) Plant Communities of the Mono Basin published by the Mono Lake Committee is a nice introduction to local plant communities.
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In the past, I have carried the Jepson Desert Manual with me in the field. The Mono Lake basin is included within the East of Sierra Nevada (SNE) region, and the illustrations in the Jepson Desert Manual are helpful. However, with the publication of the 2nd edition of the Jepson Manual and its many name changes, I don't find the Jepson Desert Manual as useful in the Mono Lake basin as other regional floras.
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Sometimes it's helpful to just have a book of photographs of common plants. For the Eastern Sierra, that would be Blackwell's Wildflowers of the Eastern Sierra. I usually take this book in my portable library, though not in my day pack.
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Literature Cited:
Most of the vegetation types in the Mono Lake basin can be described Sawyer, et al.'s (2008) 2nd edition of the Manual of California Vegetation, except two possible unique types found in the Mono Dunes and the large sand flats south of the lake.
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One of the books I carry in the field is Dean Taylor's Flora of the Yosemite Sierra. This flora explicitly includes the Mono Lake basin. I very much appreciate the somewhat different take that Taylor has on the flora of the region and some of the features he has included in his book, such as a less-rigid structure in his keys, helpful notes and comments, specific vouchers examined, and occasional gems of humor.
| Taylor also produced three lists in the early 1980s, one each for the H. M. Hall RNA (Research Natural Area), one for Indiana Summit RNA, and a third for Mono Lake.
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Indispensible because of all the recent revisions to current nomenclature, The Jepson Manual, 2nd edition, is a necessary reference for the Mono Lake basin.
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| Floristic Tour of the Mono Basin
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Let's take a geographical tour of the Mono Lake basin, starting at the Mono Lake Committee and proceeding in a clockwise direction.
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Locations: Lee Vining.
| Mono Lake Committee
David Winkler chose to pursue a doctorate degree, which left David Gaines and Sally in charge of the Committee. David and Sally traveled around the state showing a slide show on Mono Lake to schools, conservation groups, legislators, and anyone who would listen. They decided on a three-part plan of action: legal, legislative, and educational. They also decided to ask for exactly what they wanted, instead of asking for more and then compromising down to the true goal. In 1979, a Lee Vining storefront was acquired for an office. The Mono Lake Committee Information Center & Bookstore opened at this location on Memorial Day weekend in 1979. In order to attract more visitors, the Information Center also functioned as the Lee Vining Chamber of Commerce.
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| Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area Visitor CenterThe Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area Visitor Center provides regional information to travelers visiting the Mono Basin Scenic Area in the Eastern Sierra and Yosemite National Park. View exhibits on Mono Lake history, wildlife, geology, and access the interpretive trail. Docent led tours of Mono Lake, South Tufa, or Panum Crater are available.The Eastern Sierra Interpretive Association (ESIA) operates the bookstore at the visitor center, with a comprehensive selection of books and maps of the region.
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Old Marina.
| Old MarinaThe Old Marina is on the shore of Mono Lake, just north of Lee Vining Creek. You can take Mattley Avenue from near the Forest Service Information Center, or by taking US Hwy 395 north to Picnic Grounds Road.
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 Lake levels not returned to state-mandated levels
The surface of Mono Lake stood at 6417 feet when diversions of Mono Lake basin waters to Los Angeles began. The lake reached its nadir in December 1979 and January 1980 with a lake level of 6373 feet, 43 feet lower.
| A series of lawsuits, legal actions, and administrative hearings, begun in 1979 and continuing to day, resulted in State Water Board Decision 1631, which set a target lake level for Mono Lake of 6392 feet, established minimum flows and annual peak flows for the creeks, and ordered DWP to develop restoration plans for the streams and for waterfowl habitat. As shown in the chart prepared by the Mono Lake Committee, lake level has not yet returned to State Water Board mandated level of 6392 feet.
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Picnic Grounds.
| Picnic GroundsThis is the best turnoff for the road to Old Marina, for Picnic Grounds access, and the David Gaines Memorial Boardwalk.
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Andy Thompson Creek.
Tioga Lodge.
| Tioga LodgeWhat we now call the Tioga Lodge was first Hammond Station, and then the Mono Lake Post Office, before becoming Tioga Lodge.
The delta of Andy Thompson Creek, below Tioga Lodge, is a place all three species of orchid found in the Mono Lake basin can be found growing together. The orchids are Epipactus gigantea Hook. Stream Orchid, Platanthera dilatata (Pursh) Lindl. ex Beck var. leucostachys (Lindl.) Luer. Sierra Bog Orchid, and Platanthera sparsiflora (S. Watson) Schltr. Sparse-Flowered Bog Orchid.
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Mono Lake, northwest shore (as a col. locality).
| Northwest Shore of Mono LakeThe northwest shore of Mono Lake is probably the most densely collected area in the Mono Lake basin. Primary collectors here are Carl W. Sharsmith, who made a third (34) of his Mono Lake collections here. The California Geological Survey accounts for 32 collections here, in their two visits led by Wm. H. Brewer, July 9-11, 1863, and Henry N. Bolander in 1866. Dean Wm. Taylor made 29 collections at the northwest shore. And, Malcolm A. Nobs and S. Galen Smith made 23 collections in wetlands along the northwest shore in their single pass from north to south through the basin.
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Dechambeau Creek.
Thompson Ranch.
| Dechambeau Creek and Thompson Ranch
Along one of these ditches I found Hypericum scouleri and Myosotis laxa.
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Mono Lake County Park.
| Mono Lake County ParkGreat place for a picnic, the Annual Chautauqua picnic is held here, and a stroll down the boardwalk to the lake.
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Mill Creek.
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How did the Bay-Forget-Me-Not get to the Mono Lake basin? Since it is found in Mill Creek below Mono City, my guess it that it is a garden escapee. The seed is available commercially, and no special preparation is required. The plants are easy to grow, as long as they have some water. Where is it found now? Myosotis laxa is found along Mill Creek from US Highway 395 past Mono City all the way to its delta and Mono Lake. It can be seen from the boardwalk at Mono Lake County Park, and in wet areas of the former Thompson Ranch above the county park. Continuing around the northwest shore of Mono Lake, Myosotis laxa can be found in the delta of Andy Thompson Creek, along the boardwalk at Picnic Grounds, and in the delta of Lee Vining Creek.
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Lundy Canyon.
Lundy Lake.
| Lundy CanyonLundy Canyon is the northernmost canyon emptying into the Mono Lake basin.As with the other western canyons, the floor of Lundy Canyon, including Lundy and Lundy Lake, are in the (lower) Mono Lake basin, and most every location above there is in the Upper Mono Lake basin.
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| Miss Maud MinthornThere are 75 vouchers of collections made by Miss Maud Minthorn in the vicinity of Lundy during the summer of 1908. Maud Aileen Minthorn (26 March 1883-1966), was born in Plymouth County, Iowa to Pennington Wesley Minthorn and Anna Mary Heald. Her brother was Theodore Wilson Minthorn, who made a few plant collections himself. After graduating from the State Normal School in Los Angeles in 1904, Miss Minthorn taught school in Lundy. All of her collections from Lundy are dated from the summer of 1908. This would imply that Miss Minthorn was in Lundy for a single school year. All of Miss Minthorn's Mono Lake basin collections give "vicinity of Lundy" as the collection location. I have assigned all of the collections to the lower portion of the Mono Lake basin. It is likely, however, that some of the collections were made above 8400 feet and, therefore, would have been assigned to the upper Mono Lake basin were more detailed location information available. There is one plant named for Miss Minthorn: Astragalus minthorniae (Rydb.) Jepson. (Fl. Calif ii. 374, 1936, Syn: Hamosa minthorniae Rydb. Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 54:15, 1927). The type locality is Pioche, Lincoln County, Nevada. This was Miss Maud Minthorn's collection number 77 made on 24 April 1909. The holotype is at NY (Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden). Miss Minthorn also collected Frasera albomarginata in the vicinity of Pioche, Nevada Nevada, on 9 June, 1909, her collection #44. Miss Minthorn received an undergraduate scholarship from the State of California for the school year 1910-1911 and wrote an M. S. thesis titled "The nine-point conic," at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1912. After earning her masters she taught high school math in Fresno, California for many years. After retiring she lived in the San Fernando Valley, but died in Pinellas Park, Florida, in 1966.
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Bodie Hills.
Copper Mountain.
Mono Diggins.
The western boundary of the Mono Lake basin in Lundy Canyon becomes the northern boundary by snaking out of Lundy Canyon and across the face of Copper Mountain to Conway Summit, elevation 8143 ft. (2482 m.). Between Copper Mountain and Conway Summit is the headwaters of Wilson Creek, most of which is below the 8400 foot boundary between the lower and upper basin.
| Copper Mountain is named for the small copper deposits in the only massive limestone of the Mono Lake basin.
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The northern boundary of the Mono Lake basin comprises portions of the Bodie Hills from Conway Summit, to the Mount Hicks Spillway in Mineral County, Nevada.
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Conway Summit.
| Conway SummitFrom Conway Summit the northern boundary passes north of Rattlesnake Gulch and Rancheria Gulch to an unnamed hill at elevation 8662 feet.
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Rattlesnake Gulch.
| Rattlesnake GulchRattlesnake Gulch in Mono Diggin’s is a great location name for a collection.Cord Norst is credited with discovering gold here on July 7, 1859. While I've done a little collecting here, so far I haven't found anything unusual, except perhaps a specimen I identified as Potentilla gracilis var. fastigiata, which is not typically found away from the higher mountain ranges.
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Along Goat Ranch Cutoff, windblown sand from the Mono Dunes and volcanic detritus at the foot of the Bodie Hills mix to form a little different soil.
| Here, I have collected Oenothera caespitosa Nutt. Ssp. marginata (Hook. & Arn.) Munz, Tufted Evening Primrose, and Camissonia parvula (Torr. & A. Gray) P. H. Raven, the Lewis River Suncup, growing right next to each other. I also collected four different species of Cryptantha growing within a few meters of each other.
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A little more than four miles west of US Highway 395 along California Highway 167 is a good place to see the stabilized sand dunes below former shoreline of Pleistocene Lake Mono. This is the type locality and prime habitat of Tetradymia tetrameres (S. F. Blake) Strother. All collections of this taxon have been in this area except one, collected in Adobe Valley by Mary DeDecker.
| This is also the location of the few collections of Atriplex canescens (Pursh.) Nutt. Var. canescens, Four-wing Saltbush, in the Mono Lake basin. Why it is found only here, I don't know; perhaps some seed fell off a truck carrying hay, sheep, or cattle.
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| Dechambeau Ranch and PondsThe hot spring feeding Dechambeau Ponds has attracted some botanical attention.
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Locations: Black Point.
| Black PointBlack Point was a volcano that erupted under the waters Pleistocene Lake Mono. The shape of Black Point was subsequently modified by erosion. One interesting feature of Black Point is the Fissure, a crack in the top of Black Point big enough to walk into.
Gilbert et al. (1968) suggested that the volcanoes of Mono Lake are related to the “structural knee” of the western Great Basin, a region in which bedrock structures rotate from north-northwest trends to northeast trends as they are followed from south to north. They concluded that Black Point and the volcanoes of Mono Lake are localized at the apex of the knee, where there should be almost pure extension, as exhibited by the Black Point fissures.
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Bridgeport Canyon.
| Bridgeport CanyonThe northern boundary crosses an unnamed pass at the head of Bridgeport Canyon, then crosses several peaks to a small peak (8717 ft) 2/3 mile west of Mount Biedeman.Looking just ahead on the road it, dips where it is crossed by a small watercourse. There is also a small watercourse parallel to the road on the left (east). Within this “point bar” where the two watercourses merge is a south-facing natural area that has the look of someone's carefully tended rock garden.
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Bridgeport Canyon.
In the dry year of 2013, this interesting natural rock garden was in full bloom.
The Lewisia made me stop and investigate.
But what I found kept me there for three hours.
Twelve species of plants were collected, all in bloom.
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Before my collection of the Mountain Tarweed (Madia glomerata Hook.) near Reversed Creek, there was a single collection of another Madia in the Bodie Hills.
Tim Messick collected the Grassy Tarweed (Madia gracilis (Sm.) D. D. Keck & J. C. Clausen ex Applegate) in a roadside ditch such as that shown in the photograph. I have since tried to repeat that collection. However, my own #894 from approximately the same location has turned out to be M. glomerata, the Mountain Madia.
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Locations: Mount Biedeman.
| Mount BiedemanFrom the small peak west of Mount Biedeman, then northern boundary turns north to a small pass and California Highway 270 in the Cottonwood Canyon drainage.Mount Biedeman itself is entirely inside the Mono Lake basin, as the north side drains into the basin through Cottonwood Canyon, while the south side drains into Bridgeport Canyon and the Goat Ranch area.
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Sulphur Pond.
| Sulphur PondAmong the sand dunes between the lake and California Highway 167 is Sulphur Pond.
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| Bodie & Benton RailwayThe Bodie & Benton Railway was a 3 ft narrow gauge common carrier railroad in California, from the Mono Mills to a terminus in Bodie, now a ghost town, in Mono County. It was unusual among U.S. railroads in that it was completely isolated from the rest of the railroad system. As the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company, the railroad was established in 1881 to link the gold-mining town of Bodie to the Bodie Wood and Lumber Company's newly built sawmill, Mono Mills, 32 miles south of Bodie along the eastern shore of Mono Lake. The line was completed and operational on November 14, 1881. Temporary spurs into timberlands were built in 1882. When the railway ceased to be profitable in 1918, due primarily to a decline in mining activity in Bodie, the rails and all valuable equipment were pulled up and sold. The rails and equipment were trucked from the southern terminus at Mono Mills along what is today State Route 120, to the rail line at Benton for transport south.
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Locations: Black Point. South Tufa Area. Warm Springs.
| Warm SpringsOn the far eastern shore of Mono Lake is Warm Springs. Here a number of small warm (85°F.) springs create a fairly broad area of wetlands.
The type was collected by Dr. Torrey in 1865 and described by Asa Gray in 1874. Torrey's label on the isotype (NY112230) states the collection was made on the “sterile saline plains of Humboldt County, Nevada.” I assume this would be somewhere northwest of Winnemucca. However, a hand-written note on another voucher (NY112231) suggests the collection was made “in a valley west of Job's (sic) Peak, Nevada.” The valley west of Job Peak, Nevada, would be the Lahontan Valley containing the Carson Sink near Fallon, Churchill County, Nevada.
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Cottonwood Canyon.
Murphy Spring.
| Cottonwood CanyonEast and north of Mount Biedeman, the Cottonwood Canyon drainage extends deeply into the Bodie Hills, about 5 miles north of California Highway 270, all the way to the summit of Bodie Hill. For the purposes of this checklist, I exclude the portions of the Cottonwood Canyon drainage north of California Highway 270.
California Highway 270 exits the Mono Lake basin at a small pass at about 1.5 miles southwest of Bodie. The basin boundary swings south and then east across an unnamed hill to a pass just north of Sugarloaf.
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| SugarloafThe hill known as Sugarloaf, south of Bodie and California Highway 270, is good landmark for eastern edge of the Cottonwood Canyon drainage.Sugarloaf itself is entirely inside the strict definition of the Mono Lake basin, as all of its slopes drain into Cottonwood Canyon. Just a half mile north of Sugarloaf is a small pass through which Cottonwood Canyon Road enters the Bodie Creek basin from Cottonwood Canyon.
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The road to Bodie from the Mono Lake basin passes through Cottonwood Canyon. It is the largest single canyon in the Bodie Hills that drains into the Mono Lake basin.
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Bodie.
| BodieThe mining town is Bodie is just north of the Mono Lake basin. Bodie Creek drains north, ultimately into the East Walker River and then to Walker Lake.Bodie began as a mining camp of little note following the discovery of gold in 1859 by a group of prospectors, including W. S. Bodey. Bodey perished in a blizzard the following November while making a supply trip to Monoville (near present-day Mono City, California), never getting to see the rise of the town that was named after him. The district's name was changed from "Bodey," "Body," and a few other phonetic variations, to "Bodie," after a painter in the nearby boomtown of Aurora, lettered a sign "Bodie Stables." Gold discovered at Bodie coincided with the discovery of silver at nearby Aurora (thought to be in California, later found to be Nevada), and the distant Comstock Lode beneath Virginia City, Nevada. But while these two towns boomed, interest in Bodie remained lackluster. By 1868 only two companies had built stamp mills at Bodie, and both had failed. Two of the more interesting people who visited Bodie and Aurora were: Israel Russel and Mark Twain.
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| Israel C. RussellOf the many prople associated with Bodie, one of the more productive was Israel C. Russell.Born at Garrattsville, New York, in 1852, he received B.S. and C.E. degrees in 1872 from the University of the City of New York (now New York University), and later studied at the School of Mines, Columbia College, where he was assistant professor of geology from 1875-77. In 1878 he became assistant geologist on the United States geological and geographical survey west of the 100th meridian, becoming a member of the United States Geological Survey in 1880. Between 1881 and 1885 he worked at Mono Lake in east-central California. Originally employed for work with regard to surveying and building the Bodie Railway connecting Bodie to Mono Mills, he stayed for four years and wrote the seminal work Quaternary History of Mono Valley, California (1884).
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Locations: Mono Lake.
| Mark TwainMark Twain (Samuel Clemens), one of America's best-known writers, began his literary career after several of his letters to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise were published in the summer of 1862. He wrote those letters while living with his mining partners at Aurora, Nevada. Twains's residence in Aurora was relatively brief, beginning in the spring of 1862, so that he could personally attend to the many mining claims he and his brother had purchased. His first job at Aurora was as a miner digging and blasting tunnels in some of their more promising claims. Unfortunately, neither his labor as a miner, nor his speculation in Aurora’s mines, provided any income. Since his only paying job “as a common laborer in a quartz mill, at ten dollars a week and board,” lasted only a week, Sam was forced to live off money sent to him by his brother in Carson City. Twain never thought much of Aurora. He was eager to leave there during the fall of 1862 for his new job as a reporter in Virginia City. In his last letter from Aurora he complained, “ I don't think much of the camp -- not as much as I did.” He certainly didn't like living in his “wretched” cabin. He never returned. It wasn't until the 1872 publication of Twain's semi-autobiographical book “Roughing It” that he would write of his visit to Mono Lake.
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| Brawley PeaksFrom Sugarloaf just south of Bodie, the northern boundary curves north to the Brawley Peaks before turning east between Aurora Peak and Spring Peak.
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Alkali Valley.
| Spring Peak
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Mount Hicks.
Mount Hicks Spillway.
| Mount Hicks and Mount Hicks SpillwayThe Mono Lake basin boundary goes northwest to Mount Hicks and then curves northeast to the Mount Hicks Spillway, the most northern point of the basin at the north end of Alkali Valley.
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Locations: Alkali Valley.
| Alkali Valley
The name of Lake Russell for the Pleistocene lake was proposed by W. C. Putnam (1949). Russell himself proposed to use Lake Mono for the Pleistocene lake filling the basin occupied by the current Mono Lake.
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Hesperochiron californicus (Benth.) Watson, with a unusual common name of California Monkey-fiddle, is fairly common in the west, being found throughout mountainous eastern California in Yellow Pine Forest, Red Fir Forest, Lodgepole Forest, and wet meadows, flats, valleys, to Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Baja California.
| There are five collections in Long Valley, and two in Bridgeport Valley, but none from the Mono Lake basin, except for my collection in Alkali Valley. Given the location that it was found, on the muddy edge of an alkali playa, at the edge of the sagebrush, it seems surprising that it has such a wide distribution of geography and habitat.
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Adobe Hills Spillway.
Anchorite Pass.
| Anchorite HillsFrom the Mount Hicks spillway, the northern boundary passes across Powell Mountain and then curves south across Table Mountain and through the Anchorite Hills to the main eastern landmark at Anchorite Pass on Nevada Highway 359 (California Highway 167 on the California side of the state boundary).The eastern boundary of the Mono Lake basin from Anchorite Pass to the Adobe Hills Spillway is pretty vague through the Adobe Hills as there are few well-known landmarks.
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The extreme dryness has greatly limited the understory vegetation, perhaps creating a fire-safe location for these very large Junipers near the Nevada border (Barbour, et al., 2007).
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Locations: Basalt. Hereford Valley Ranch. Project Flambeau, Experimental Fire 460-14-65. Project Flambeau, Experimental Fire 460-7-66.
| Deep Cañon
In a good wet year, this area could use some botanical attention. There is also some sort of odd patterned ground out here. At the surface it's a little difficult to recognize, but, on GoogleEarth, it's obvious that someone was out here tearing up the landscape. Having looked at it on the ground, I doubt it was the result of Pinyon clearance. The pattern is rectilinear, and there are a few anchor eyes visible above the surface. It looks more like an antenna experiment, in which cables were buried in a rectilinear pattern to provide a ground plane below an antenna or a tower. An article in the April 3, 2017, issue of High Country News provided the necessary clue to the source of this odd patterned ground when the author (Fox, 2017) referred to large fires set east of Mono Lake in “Project Flambeau.” In 1962, the Forest Service in cooperation with the Department of Defense undertook a large-scale investigation – called Project Flambeau – to add to current knowledge of the characteristics and behavior of mass fire. The study was not designed to develop cause-and-effect relationships, but rather to gain some insight into as many aspects as possible of mass fire. A series of test fires were burned on isolated sites in California and Nevada. Five of the fires were conducted near Basalt, Mineral County, Nevada. Two fires were on the east side of Mono Lake, near Deep Cañon. And two more fires were near Queens Valley Ranch, Mineral County, Nevada (Palmer, 1969). The ranch in the section given by Palmer, T1N R33E S18, is called the Hereford Valley Ranch on USGS maps and in the GNIS. The data collected were intended to provide information about large free-burning fires for use in development of realistic theoretical and experimental studies aimed at solving specific mass fire problems. The investigation was focused on urban fires and civil defense problems, but information obtained should be useful for other purposes as well (Countryman, 1969).
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Adobe Hills Spillway.
| Adobe Hills Spillway
At the spillway is a fresh water sandstone with fossil snail shells. There are a few Ipomopsis congesta (Hook.) V. E. Grant ssp. congesta (Ballhead Ipomopsis) growing on the sandstone. Most other collections of Ipomopsis congesta, typically in the high passes on the west side of the Mono Lake basin, are of ssp. montana. In fact, with the exception of two collections in the Inyo Mountains, most collections of ssp. congesta were made far to the north in Lassen, Shasta, and Siskiyou counties. Determination of subspecies of Ipomopsis congesta is made by the lobing of leaves, which is pinnate for ssp. congesta and palmate for montana. The leaves of the collections made at the Adobe Hills Spillway are clearly pinnate, leading to a determination of ssp. congesta.
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Cowtrack Mountain.
Sagehen Summit.
| Cowtrack Mountain
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Between Cowtrack Mountain and Sagehen Summit, the boundary of the Mono Lake Basin passes through a relatively narrow (1/2 mile) and long (3 miles) unnamed valley. To the south this valley drains through North Creek into Adobe Valley. To the north, it drains through Indian Spring to Mono Lake. North northwest trending faults are drawn through this valley, extending all the way to Warm Spring on the shore of the lake. To the south southeast, several faults are drawn, extending approximately to Sentinal and Wet Meadows on the north face of Glass Mountain.
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Indian Spring.
Indian Spring is likely a perennial source of water. Unfortunately, it is deeply incised, probably due to heavy use by grazing animals.
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Big Sand Flat.
| Sagehen Summit
Big Sand Flat is a half mile wide by 3½ miles long. It was formed by faulting on the northwest side. Big Sand Flat is also the type locality of Lupinus duranii Eastw., the Mono Lake Lupine (Victor Duran, #3343, July 15, 1932, vouchers at CAS, DS, GH, NY, POM, RSA, UC, UCD). In wet years, it often puts on a good show with Mimulus nanus Hook. & Arn. Var. mephiticus (Greene) D. M. Thomps., the Mono Lake form of the Skunky Monkey Flower. While not the type locality of Astragalus monoensis Barneby, the Mono Milk-Vetch, the taxon can be found scattered around the flat.
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Dry Creek enters Big Sand Flat at the eastern end of the flat. There is perennial water here, enough to maintain a very small wetland. The spring has been enlarged or dug out, presumably to permit pumping of water for sheep grazing.
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Dry Creek.
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