Stalagmites And Stunning Vistas

By James Willwerth/Great Basin National Park

Rising abruptly from the eastern Nevada desert, snow-capped Wheeler Peak has long been a regional attraction. Visitors began arriving in 1885, after Rancher Absalom Lehman discovered vast limestone caves in the neighboring foothills. Swinging a sledgehammer to cut paths through forests of stalactites and stalagmites, Lehman then led candlelight tours through the caves for a dollar a head. After President Warren G. Harding declared the caves a national monument in 1922, Manager Clarence Rhodes rented them out for weddings, dances and initiation ceremonies for the Knights of Pythias, who frolicked in clouds of sulfurous smoke wearing costumes.

Last week, beneath the majestic 13,060-ft. mountain, Nevada Governor Richard Bryan and former Senator Paul Laxalt, along with other dignitaries, dedicated the surrounding 120 sq. mi. of wilderness as Great Basin National Park, the country's 49th. Named by Explorer John C. Fremont, the area known as the Great Basin stretches across northern Nevada, touching California, Oregon, Utah and Idaho. Once an inland sea, it was formed 20 million years ago by geologic plates thrusting sediment layers upward into mountain ranges. The relatively small national park contains nearly all the Great Basin's ecosystems, from desert to arctic-alpine tundra, encompassing 3,000-year-old bristlecone pines, glacial lakes and one of the continent's southernmost permanent ice fields. As recently as 10,000 years ago, bowl-like cirques in the park's mountains were sculpted by glaciers, which left in their wake gray carpets of rock known as taluses.

Federal agencies have managed the area since 1932, but efforts to make the caves and neighboring mountains into a national park were frustrated by local ranching and mining interests. Great Basin Park, however, is good news for nearby White Pine County, a dusty patchwork of small towns, ranches and mines. Indeed, merchants from Ely (pop. 7,000) convinced Nevada's congressional delegation last summer that the park was desperately needed. For decades, Kennecott Copper Corp., which provided thousands of jobs at an open-pit mine near Ruth, had argued that the mountains might be mineral rich. By 1980 the mine was closed, undercut by cheap foreign copper. Unemployment skyrocketed. The new park, they hoped, would bring paying guests for hotels, restaurants and other services. Conservation suddenly began to look like good business.

At Laxalt's urging, the Reagan Administration, normally cool to such environmental overtures, went along. One reason: Laxalt helped negotiate "multiple use" privileges for cattle grazing and valid mining claims. Even so, it will take years for the new park to become fully operational, says Superintendent Al Hendricks. Hiking paths are barely marked, roads often too bumpy for cars, and campsites have no potable water. Rangers are still taking inventory of plant and animal life, charting soil types and reviewing mining claims. The public has taken a role in park planning through a series of town- hall meetings. Among the suggestions: erecting campsite fences to keep out cows and banning fat-tired all-terrain bicycles from trails.