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Homage to the Tufa
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JTlRST, ABOUT Nevada: I discovered
it, like many other people,
while crossing it to get somewhere
else. Now, it's hard for me to leave
it. In my vacations there, I've never
won a dollar, nor lost a dime, but I
have gained profound enjoyment.
The wild antelopes of the great
Sheldon Refuge, the gem fields of
Virgin Valley, the dripstone wonders
of Lehman Cave, the exquisite land
sculpture of Cathedral Gorge, and
the fossil shore features of Walker
Lake are among the spectacular, but
the call of Nevada does not emanate
from the spectacular alone. While
driving across the state, you'll discover
sublime features whose vastness,
simplicity and mystery can convey
to your soul unutterable peace
and serenity. The charm of raw
Nevada is in expansive valleys with
gray- green sage and shining playas;
in uplifted block mountains of tilted
strata, beds of pink rhyolite tuff and
frozen flows of black basalt; in broad
mountain passes that cut through
pigmy woodlands of pinyon and juni-
per and in endless highways stretching
from horizon to horizon. It is a
changing land, as revealed by deserted
strands of vanished lakes contouring
the mountain ridges, and gully-textured
badlands that remind the
thoughtful of a basin country long
past.
At Fernley, not far from Reno, I
once met a friendly Paiute who said,
proudly, "Have you been to Pyramid
Lake? I'm part owner of it. The
lake and all the land around it belongs
to my tribe. There are lots of
big trout there. You should see it."
My wife and I were at the moment
en route to Pyramid; not to fish, but
to share in the charm and mystery of
the land. On film we caught the
dynamic flash of feathery cirrus
clouds, whipped by an updraft
bouncing above the Sierra Nevada.
Back to earth, near the shore, we saw
multidomed mammillary masses of
giant tufas and, on higher terraces,
ragged reefs of upward-flaring, filigreed,
scalloped limestone plates. Encompassing
the stone cauliflowers at
Diagra?n of algal zuater biscuits from Carson Sink, Nevada. The colony
began as a green, slimy coating on a small pebble that rested on the silty
bottom of ancient Lake Lahontan. The algae deposited a coating of calcium
carbonate on the pebble, thus expanding the foundation, making room for
more algae. So the algal colony and the limestone support continued to grow
toward the light. The additional iceight pushed the base of the colony doiun
into the silt and the rim grew upward and outward, creating a bowl shape
below and a dome shape above. The dome was not solid but consisted of
branching columns with water spaces between, all advancing at an even rate.
32 / Desert Magazine / January, 1965
by Albert Ervin Thompson
our feet, they presented a mental
glimpse of a time long before Columbus,
even long before ancestors of the
Paiutes lound this magic shore.
From the days of the mountain
men and '49ers, travelers and settlers
in the deserts of eastern California
and western Nevada have noticed
with amazement and wonder vast deposits
of porous, intricately textured
limestone disposed in heads, hummocks,
and pillars, and in great sheets,
ledges and multiple masses. Many of
the ledges resemble coral reefs,
though no actual coral is present, and
are disposed horizontally along the
contours of mountains between what
seems to be sandy beaches and wavecut
terraces and cliffs. Some of the
limestone masses actually stand in
the water at Pyramid Lake, but
others are miles away and hundreds
of feet above water or any sign of
it, except, perhaps, a distant playa
lake or dry salt bed.
In the last century, before 1885, a
great geologist of the United States
Geological Survey, I. C. Russell,
studied these limey deposits, classified
their various forms and deduced
their origin. His work was so thorough
that it has stood unchallenged to
the present. He found that a great
lake of 8422 square miles, twice or
more, had occupied the confluent
basins east and north of Reno. The
deserted strand marks of the lake
called Lahontan extend in tortuous
contours from Honey Lake, California,
to Hawthorne, Nevada, and
northward to the Oregon border.
Russell found that Lake Lahontan
had supported vast colonies of simple,
primitive water plants called bluegreen
algae which adhered to every
solid support beneath the water and,
over many centuries, deposited the
algal limestone or calcareous tufa
often referred to as travertine. Other
scientists later confirmed and added
to this study. They found that the
chemical-biological cycle that made
the algal tufas is still at work in Pyramid
and Walker Lake and other
lakes and streams around the world.
Members of the same group of plants
live in the ocean, where they assist in
building so-called coral reefs, which