California & the Great Basin Fine Art Print Map
The Great Basin covers the vast
interior portion of the intermountain West whose rivers and streams do not
reach the sea. All of California and Nevada are on the map, as well as most of Utah and Arizona and parts of Baja California Norte and Somoma, Oregon, and Idaho.
That’s the hydrographic definition, but there are other more expansive ones:
the physiographic, anthropological and biogeographical definitions all extend
further, especially to the south. The name was coined by John Fremont, who had
a gift for naming: he also gave us the "Golden Gate”.
The Great Basin in its present form
developed around 2 million years ago, when the rising Sierra Nevada and Cascade
Ranges started blocking much of the moisture off the Pacific. Its many internal
ranges are largely the product of longer term Basin-and-Range rifting, part of
the tectonic process that is producing the Gulf of California.
In geological time the Great Basin
is brand new and its hydrological definition might almost be called fleeting.
In the human time scale, it can be considered eternal.
All of California
and Nevada are on the map, as well as most of Utah and Arizona, some of Oregon and Idaho, and parts
of Baja California Norte and Sonora.
Dimensions:
All map dimensions are approximate.
