New National Park Expected to Boost Nevada’s Morale : Alpine Lakes and Lush Meadows Contrast With Las Vegas Image

In the first summer of its existence, the country’s newest national park may not yet have paved the way for an economic boom in eastern Nevada, but it is, according to Gov. Richard H. Bryan, helping the state shed its “inferiority complex.”

Created by an act of Congress signed by President Reagan on Oct. 27, America’s 49th national park is centered on 13,063-foot Wheeler Peak and includes glistening alpine lakes, lush meadows, deep caves and gnarled and grotesque groves of bristlecone pine, the oldest living trees on Earth. It also has working cattle and sheep ranches.

The crowds at the remote park--created from Lehman Caves National Monument and parts of the Humboldt National Forest--do not rival those at Yosemite. In the first six months of 1987, 16,300 visitors were recorded, compared to 12,700 for Lehman Caves in the same period last year. For those who visit, though, the relative absence of people is one of the charms.

“We love this park. We have visited many national parks. As far as we’re concerned this ranks alongside the best of them. We like the fact that not many people have discovered this one yet,” said San Diego school teacher Ethel Spahn, 62, as she and daughters Karen Spahn, 36 and Bunny Slaughter, 35, hiked along the bristlecone pine trail, led by ranger Doug Price, 24.

After walking through meadows of lupine, yellow aster and prickle poppy, by deep blue alpine lakes and through deep snow, the hikers emerged on an exposed ridge in the midst of a stand of ancient bristlecone pine, trees 2,000 to 4,000 years old.

It is a world removed from the glitz of Las Vegas and the jangling slot machines of Reno, and, Bryan said, a boost in image for the state.

“For a state so often perceived by Washington as a land fit for nothing but nuclear waste and other kinds of undesirable activity nobody else wants, Great Basin National Park sends an eloquent message (that) . . . Nevada is truly a place of beauty,” he said in an interview.

Bryan said Nevada “suffers from an inferiority complex. We get more than our share of raps from the national media reflecting adversely upon our state. This park greatly enhances Nevada’s image.”

“It means Nevada will be recognized from now on for something other than desert, gambling and legalized prostitution,” said Ferrel Hansen, 35, manager of the White Pine County Chamber of Commerce in nearby Ely.

“We expect the national park will bring large numbers of visitors to this area from now on, that it will be a very positive factor to our local economy. This has been a depressed area for years,” Hansen added.

Maybe the 77,109-acre park will make an economic difference in the area, but in tiny Baker, five miles outside the park’s main entrance, it’s not apparent yet.

Baker, population 50, isn’t much--half a dozen houses, a bar, a bar and cafe combination, gas station, post office, two-room school and a seven-room motel. It has no sewers and no water system.

‘Peaceful, Quiet’

Reita Berger, 54, and her husband Chuck, 56, owners-operators of The Outlaw, the bar and cafe, were talking about the new park while seated at a table next to a row of slot machines. On a shelf above the slot machines was a life-size female doll, its arms around the head of a buck deer with huge antlers. Next to it was a fake buffalo head.

“Sure we’re way out in the middle of nowhere,” Reita Berger acknowledged. “Those of us who live here, live here because it is peaceful, quiet and away from people. In time this will probably all change. But when and how we’re not sure.”

No property in Baker has been sold since the establishment of the park. It is expected, however, that eventually there will be at least a first-class hotel, restaurant and casino here to cater to park visitors. A five-acre trailer park in Baker valued at about $20,000 last year has been for sale for two months for $200,000.

What will happen to Baker, of course, depends upon how many visitors Great Basin National Park attracts. The park is in one of the most isolated areas of the nation.

It is 300 miles north of Las Vegas, 250 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, a few miles off U.S. 50, a seldom driven, narrow, two-lane stretch of pavement slicing through desert and high mountains that Life magazine and the American Automobile Assn. recently called “the loneliest road in America.”

Park Development Plan

Park Supt. Al Hendricks and his staff are starting to work on a plan of development for Great Basin that will be completed by October, 1989.

Park Service personnel are surveying the mountain, taking an inventory of resources on Wheeler Peak. Dirt roads are being graded. New brochures about the park are available.

Park headquarters and visitor center is at Lehman Caves, named after rancher Absalom S. Lehman, who discovered them in 1885.

Rangers lead visitors on 90-minute tours along a two-third-mile path through the limestone caves that are full of fascinating formations. Lights are extinguished at noon each day, and people carry candles to light their way through the caves, as visitors did in the days before electricity was available.

“These are exciting times out here in Nevada’s outback,” said Hendricks, 37, superintendent of Lehman Caves National Monument for six years.

Great Basin National Park was originally proposed in 1924 but was repeatedly blocked by Nevada mining and agricultural interests.

The park became a reality through a series of compromises permitting mining on existing claims and a provision unique to Great Basin National Park allowing the grazing of cattle and sheep on Wheeler Peak in perpetuity.

‘We Had Our Doubts’

Rancher Wayne Gonder, 78; his wife, Molly, 74, and son, Owen, 45, are typical of the ranchers in Snake Valley on the eastern flanks of Wheeler Peak who fought the park.

Since mid-June the Gonders have been trailing 260 head of cattle from their mile-high ranch to alpine meadows in the national park. At any given time there are as many as 1,000 cattle or 2,000 sheep grazing in the park.

“We had our doubts. We worried about restrictions being imposed by the park service. But so far everything has been as it always has in the past. It looks like it’s going to work,” Owen Gonder said.

“Park visitors seem to enjoy us. Few have ever seen a real honest-to-goodness cattle drive. We enjoy meeting and talking to people, who, by the way, are constantly taking our pictures,” said Molly Gonder.

Joel Griggs, 48, spokesman for the 200-member Free Enterprise Associates, a group of local opponents to the park, is now a park electrician: Six Snake Valley residents who opposed creation of the park are now working for it.

Hendricks said many of those who vigorously opposed the park also will participate in the official dedication Aug. 15.

‘Expanded Consciousness’

Also caught up in the enthusiasm for the park are followers of the late mystic Vitvan, who live on the 340-acre School of the Natural Order Farm abutting the park’s eastern boundary. The group, which practices “expanded consciousness,” was founded in 1923 by Vitvan, who died at the farm in 1964, at age 81.

Vitvan, who called himself “an elder of the inner order,” took his followers to the isolated mountain 30 years ago to seek peace and quiet. Here they spend hours meditating and chanting and listening to the philosophy of the master, recorded on 100 hours of audio tape before his death.

“The transition has been going just fine,” said Val Taylor, 62, secretary of the School of the Natural Order and justice of the peace for Baker. “Like the ranchers, we worried that the national park would take over our headquarters and farms and we would be forced to move. But now we feel the park and the School of Natural Order can live side by side without any conflict.”