Black Rock Desert
The Black Rock Desert is a vast empty playa (dry lake bed) in northwestern Nevada. It is one of the largest perfectly flat areas in the world. For most of the year it is a silent, almost completely empty expanse of cracked white mud. For one week every August, however, it transforms into the temporary city of Burning Man, attracting around 70,000 people in one of the most unusual festivals on Earth. The desert has also been the site of land speed records and supersonic vehicle tests.
- Areaapprox. 2,500 km²About the size of Luxembourg
- CountryUnited StatesNorthwestern Nevada
- SurfaceDry lake bedBonneville-style flat alkali playa
- Famous eventBurning Man festivalEvery August
- Famous recordLand speed recordThrustSSC, 1,228 km/h in 1997
- OriginLake LahontanIce-age lake that dried up approx. 9,000 years ago
Famous dry lake beds (km²)
The Black Rock is one of the largest dry lake beds in the US, though it is dwarfed by Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni, the largest in the world.
What is the Black Rock?
The Black Rock Desert is a flat, almost lifeless playa surrounded by jagged mountain ranges. The name comes from a dark volcanic outcrop on the desert's north end. For most of the year the playa is a vast white sheet of cracked alkali mud, perfectly flat and so dry that almost no plants grow on it. After rare winter storms a thin layer of water may briefly cover the surface, but it quickly evaporates again. The desert is bordered by barren mountains and contains very few permanent residents.
Land speed records
The extreme flatness of the Black Rock makes it perfect for setting land speed records. In 1997, the British jet car ThrustSSC, driven by Andy Green, became the first land vehicle ever to break the sound barrier here, reaching 1,228 km/h (763 mph). The Bloodhound LSR project tested its own jet/rocket car on the Black Rock in 2019, reaching 1,010 km/h. The current British project plans to attempt a new record above 1,290 km/h, although the project has had repeated funding difficulties.
Burning Man
Burning Man is an annual week-long event held on the Black Rock Desert. Participants build a temporary city of tents, RVs and art installations called Black Rock City. The event ends with the symbolic burning of a giant wooden human figure ("the Man") and, the following night, of a "Temple" built each year by participants for reflection on loss and memory. After the festival ends, participants are required to "leave no trace": every scrap of rubbish, every dropped sequin, must be removed. The desert is then closed and recovers until the next year.
The ice age origin
The Black Rock is the dry bed of an ancient ice-age lake called Lake Lahontan. During the last ice age, Lake Lahontan covered around 22,000 square km of northwestern Nevada and northeastern California, including what is now the Black Rock Desert and Pyramid Lake. As the climate warmed at the end of the ice age, the lake evaporated faster than rivers could refill it, and it gradually dried up over the last 15,000 years. The remaining playa is what was left when the water finally disappeared.
Deeper dive: Lake Lahontan, the BLM management and the playa's strange physics
The Black Rock Desert is one of the largest surviving remnants of Lake Lahontan, the giant pluvial (ice-age) lake that once dominated the western Great Basin. At its maximum extent around 13,000 years ago, Lake Lahontan covered approx. 22,000 square km in northwestern Nevada and adjacent California, at a depth of up to 270 metres in the deepest sections. Modern Pyramid Lake (in the foothills west of Reno) is the largest surviving remnant. The Black Rock Desert was the deep central basin of one of Lahontan's major lobes. Wave-cut shorelines and beach deposits are still visible on the mountains around the desert, marking the ancient lake levels at different periods.
The Black Rock Desert is managed by the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees most federal public land in the western United States. The desert was officially designated the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area in 2000, protecting around 3,000 square km from development. The BLM allows extensive recreation (camping, hiking, off-roading, land sailing, model rocketry, Burning Man) but tightly controls activities to prevent damage to the fragile playa surface and to historical sites (the area contains sections of the original 1840s emigrant trails to California).
The playa surface has some unusual physical properties. The alkali mud is so fine-grained that wet conditions make it instantly impassable: vehicles sink to their axles within seconds and have to be towed out. When dry, the same surface is hard enough to support heavy aircraft. A thin overnight wetting from morning dew can be enough to leave footprints visible for months. The polygonal cracks that form as the surface dries are a result of mud contraction and can be up to 30 cm deep in places. After a rain, the playa's mud is among the most slippery natural surfaces known: even fully off-road vehicles cannot make progress.
The country is the United States. The wider desert region is the Great Basin Desert.