Great Basin National Park
Out in eastern Nevada, a long way from almost any city, is Great Basin National Park. The jewel of Great Basin is Lehman Caves, one of the most "decorated" caves known, with a wide range of odd cave formations (stalactites and stalagmites, but lots more, too). (Note that the name is plural—Lehman Caves—but it is just one cave. We’re not sure why.) Lehman Caves is dissolved into marble (metamorphosed limestone) on the side of Wheeler Peak, which rises to more than 13,000 feet (almost 4000 m), and which was glaciated during the ice age; only a very small glacier remains in the cirque (about 2 acres). Great Basin is one of the less-visited national parks, with yearly attendance not too much over 100,000 visitors, so you can find a lot of solitude and wonder in this beautiful place.
Far up on Wheeler Peak, Great Basin bristlecone pines are living. These gnarled, straggly trees grow slowly in high, cold places, whereas bristlecone pines growing in warmer, moister, lower-elevation sites live faster and die younger. In part because of this slow growth, the high-altitude trees can be very old. The oldest known living bristlecone pine is more than 4,600 years old, in the White Mountains of California. The oldest tree known so far was cut on Wheeler Peak in 1964, when the land was still administered by the U.S. Forest Service, as part of a study to learn more about the growth and behavior of the trees. Now known as Prometheus, that tree was 4,950 years old when cut. That one old-looking tree was not notably different from many others in the large grove. Because it is so unlikely that the first such tree cut on Wheeler Peak out of the many there would happen to be the oldest tree on Earth, it is likely that there are older trees out there that have not been sampled yet.
Take a Tour of Great Basin National Park and Lehman Caves
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Visit the Great Basin National Park website. While you are not required to review this, you may find it interesting and possibly even helpful in preparing for the quiz!