The Great Basin National Park is located in the US state of Nevada. Almost 80,000 visitors enjoy pure nature and its sights on a park area of ​​312 km². Founded on October 27, 1987, the Great Basin National Park is a great destination for excursions and naturalists. See a2zdirectory for tourist attractions in Nevada.

Why the Great Basin?

The name Great Basin National Park comes from the fact that the Great Basin desert is located here. In English this means Great Basin. This is how the national park got its name. Incidentally, the Great Basin forms a drainless depression between the Sierra Nevada and the world-famous Rocky Mountains.

Famous trees

The Great Basin National Park is particularly known for its pine trees. The long-lived pine (Pinus Longaeva) are the oldest known living creature. They are up to 3,000 years old!
In addition, the Lehman Caves stalactite cave can be found in the Great Basin National Park, which is located at the foot of the Wheeler Peak. The stalactite formations are among the most bizarre of their kind and are valued by scientists and visitors alike all over the world.

The Lehman Caves were discovered in 1885. Absolom Lehman made good money by letting visitors climb into the cave with a candle in hand for a dollar entrance fee. These then went on their own wandering in the cave. As a result, the visitors destroyed a lot and of course broke off one or the other souvenir from the caves and took them home. It got even stranger when dance began to be held in the cave. It was not until 1922 that it was recognized what valuable goods had been destroyed here for years. In order to save it from collapse, the Lehman Caves were placed under protection. So you can neither dance nor break off a few stones here today. Only guided tours take place here, which does justice to the beauty of the caves and protects them.

Wheeler Peak is the only glacier in Nevada’s alpine landscape. Especially the beautiful mountain lakes of Wheeler Peak are a great sight.

Incidentally, here in the park you can breathe the cleanest air in the entire United States outside of Alaska.

The flora and fauna in the Great Basin National Park

Mainly one finds in the Great Basin National Park Alpine Tundra. This means that mainly mosses, grasses, lichens and many flowers have developed. The occurrence of the pines is particularly noteworthy. Here are some specimens that are over 3,000 years old. There was even a tree that was much older. He was dated to 4,844 years of age! He had to give way to a scientist’s urge to research. He simply had the tree felled in 1960. Not because it was in the way, but because you wanted to know how old it actually was!

This is one of the reasons why the national park was founded. It was recognized that these trees are the oldest living things on our earth. The tree was baptized Prometheus. Since then, all of the pines in the park have been protected.

The animals here are very shy of people. Come here particularly frequently Rattlesnakes ahead. Visitors should not be fooled, as a large number of insects have developed in the Great Basin that can imitate rattlesnake noises.