Hello, my name is Garrett Barmore.
I'm the curator here at the W.M. Keck Earth Science and Mineral Engineering Museum.
Welcome to Mineral Monday.
Let's head into the gallery.
[Mineral Monday with Garrett Barmore]
This is one of my favorite objects in the museum.
This is a relief map of Nevada
that was made in 1915
to represent Nevada in the Pan Pacific World's Fair in San Francisco.
But because it's a relief map, which is all these bumps,
it illustrates several important geological facts about Nevada.
The first being that Nevada is the most mountainous state in the United States;
we have more mountains than any other state.
Second, it illustrates the basin and range system here in Nevada.
So you have a basin and a range, a basin and a range, a basin and a range
all across the state.
And what caused this
is that the earth's crust in this area was stretched up to 100% of it's original width
which caused these mostly north-south running faults to form.
And along these faults,
the mountains were uplifted and the basins were dropped.
which caused this very unique formation.
But Nevada is also part of a larger geological system
called the Great Basin.
And what's cool about the Great Basin, is it's what's called a terminal basin,
meaning all the water in Nevada –
the rivers, the streams, the lakes –
end in Nevada.
None of it goes to the ocean
which is relatively rare on earth.
This map is located on the ground floor of the main gallery,
directly across from the main doors.
See you next Mineral Monday.
[College of Science: Live a life of discovery]
