Rep. Mark Amodei managed to get a bill through the House that would allow Yerington to buy 10,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land at market value to facilitate development of the Pumpkin Hollow copper mine, but Nevada’s senior Sen. Harry Reid is holding it up in the Senate because he wants the bill to include language creating a wilderness area.
Wovoka, also called Jack Wilson
Wovoka — as I report in this week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times, is what a group calling themselves Friends of Nevada Wilderness would like to call an 80,000-acre tract of land in Lyon County they want to be designated as a wilderness area.
The land in question is already under federal control and its use is subject to rules, regulations and whims of federal agents. But wilderness designation would make the land virtually off-limits for the average Nevadan.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines a wilderness area as one “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man … retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation …”
No vehicles, no roads, no trails, no outhouses, no park benches, no trash cans, no power tools, no bicycles, no cutting firewood. Accessible to only the most able bodied.
There have been efforts in the past, with the support of Sen. Reid, to have a wilderness area designated in Lyon County, but they drew such vocal opposition from residents and elected officials that they were abandoned.
East Walker River in the proposed Wovoka wilderness as posted on website of Friends of Nevada Wilderness. (Photo by Kurt Kuznicki)
As for the name that is being proposed for such a wilderness area, Wovoka was a Northern Paiute born in the mid-1850s in Smith Valley.
He also went by the name of Jack Wilson. Wovoka followed in the footsteps of his shaman father.
During a solar eclipse on Jan. 1, 1889, Wovoka claimed to have a vision: “When the sun died, I went up to heaven and saw God and all the people who had died a long time ago. God told me to come back and tell my people they must be good and love one another, and not fight, or steal, or lie. He gave me this dance to give my people.”
The dance was the Ghost Dance.
Read the column to find out why the name Wovoka is appropriate for a wilderness area.
4TH ST8 
you people shold leave Lyon County alone.
Does that mean you are for or against a wilderness designation?
________________________________
Who’s “you people”?
That was my question, Athos. Not sure who the person means or what they mean. Could go either way.
[…] 159 — also sets aside, to satisfy Sen. Harry Reid’s “green” buddies, the Wovoka Wilderness area. There is a companion bill coursing its may through the […]
[…] Sen. Harry Reid insisted on adding the Wovoka Wilderness Area to the Yerington land bill that would allow the town to annex the Pumpkin Hollow copper mine and […]
[…] demanded that the bill include the set aside of 48,000 acres of wilderness, to be called the Wovoka Wilderness Area, a proposal the local residences had previously […]
[…] Reid demanded that the bill include designation of 48,000 acres of wilderness, to be called the Wovoka Wilderness Area, a proposal the local residents had previously rejected. it now […]
[…] Reid demanded that the bill include designation of 48,000 acres of wilderness, to be called the Wovoka Wilderness Area, a proposal the local residents had previously […]
[…] Reid demanded that the bill include designation of 48,000 acres of wilderness, to be called the Wovoka Wilderness Area, a proposal the local residents had previously […]
[…] withdrawal of the land, just as the officials and residents of Lyon County opposed the 48,000-acre Wovoka Wilderness designation that Harry Reid insisted on as a condition for allowing Yerington to buy at market value 12,500 […]
[…] withdrawal of the land, just as the officials and residents of Lyon County opposed the 48,000-acre Wovoka Wilderness designation that Harry Reid insisted on as a condition for allowing Yerington to buy at market value 12,500 […]
[…] Asked about Sen. Harry Reid’s bill to bar development on more than a million acres of land in Gold Butte and Coal and Garden valleys in Cresent Hardy’s district, Amodei replied, “I’ll tell you what I learned from Harry Reid and the Yerington land bill … Senator Reid said, and he’ll acknowledge it, he said we need a, quote, conservation element in that bill, unquote.” Reid demanded the creation of the Wovoka Wilderness area. […]