"What conservationists have said from the beginning is that this world, and all its treasures, is finite. Treat it right and you will live. Squander and plunder and rape and you will someday suffer." - WOC founder Tom Bell
Programs - Red Desert - Defining the Red Desert
Called the “Great American Desert” by pioneers, the Red Desert is a vast expanse of high altitude dry land covered in sagebrush, unusual landforms, and abundant wildlife. Where is the Red Desert? There is some confusion about where the desert lies because the term Red Desert has been used interchangeably to describe the Jack Morrow Hills planning area. Jack Morrow was a criminal and thief. His name was given to the area by the BLM as part of a trend to name planning areas after people or geographic areas that do not capture the romance and mystique of the land. Conservationists countered this trend by referring to the Hills as the Red Desert.
But the Red Desert is not limited to the 620,000-acre Jack Morrow Hills study area. The Red Desert encompasses millions of acres including: much of the Rock Springs Field Office, the western half of the Great Divide (Rawlins) Field Office, and a small portion of Northern Colorado (see
map).
The earliest description of the Red Desert we know of comes from a USDA publication in 1898, titled "The Red Desert of Wyoming and its Forage Resources." This publication described the Red Desert as extending from the North Platte to the Green River, with the south boundary as the Wyoming state line. An additional 1898 article in Recreation Magazine by Dr. Frank Dunham contains a rough map and a reference to a "tract of country marked the red desert" in Northern Sweetwater County.
A more recent conception of the Red Desert derives from the BLM's "Red Desert Study" (circa 1974), which covered the Great Divide Basin north of Interstate 80. There is no indication that this study was ever intended to delineate the extent of the Red Desert itself; boundaries shown are merely the boundaries of the study, not the Desert itself. It would not make a lot of sense to bound a geographic unit such as the Red Desert by an arbitrary man-made feature such as I-80 which wasn't built until the 1960s.
To further cloud the issue, there is a much smaller Red Desert
Basin that is officially recognized by the USGS.
In 2000 the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance defined the boundary of the Greater Red Desert proper based on ecological characteristics. The boundary they established encompasses the entire Great Divide Basin plus the Washakie Basin. It is bounded on the north by the north leg of the Continental Divide, on the east by the eastern boundary of the Great Divide Basin and the Atlantic Rim massif, on the west by the western boundary of the Great Divide Divide Basin and the Pine Mountain-Quaking Aspen Mountain range, and on the south by the bluffs above the Little Snake River at the northern edge of Colorado. This is consistent with the USDA's 1898 version, except that it extends slightly into Colorado and is smaller on the eastern and western sides.
Programs - Red Desert - Defining the Red Desert
A more recent conception of the Red Desert derives from the BLM's "Red Desert Study" (circa 1974), which covered the Great Divide Basin north of Interstate 80. There is no indication that this study was ever intended to delineate the extent of the Red Desert itself; boundaries shown are merely the boundaries of the study, not the Desert itself. It would not make a lot of sense to bound a geographic unit such as the Red Desert by an arbitrary man-made feature such as I-80 which wasn't built until the 1960s.
In 2000 the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance defined the boundary of the Greater Red Desert proper based on ecological characteristics. The boundary they established encompasses the entire Great Divide Basin plus the Washakie Basin. It is bounded on the north by the north leg of the Continental Divide, on the east by the eastern boundary of the Great Divide Basin and the Atlantic Rim massif, on the west by the western boundary of the Great Divide Divide Basin and the Pine Mountain-Quaking Aspen Mountain range, and on the south by the bluffs above the Little Snake River at the northern edge of Colorado. This is consistent with the USDA's 1898 version, except that it extends slightly into Colorado and is smaller on the eastern and western sides.
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