Hello! Ethan here. Today was a dry, hot, sunny day. The stats, for your enjoyment:
Austin, NV—>Eureka, NV—63.02 miles—1,678 feet of elevation—at least a million Mormon Crickets seen.
We started out today pretty early; we’d made a goal as a team to get up early so we could beat the desert heat. In case you didn’t know, Nevada is hot (Bandala, Kebede, Jonsson, et al., 2019). We’ve been trying very hard to avoid the crazy UV index and stay cool and hydrated along the way. I’ve decided that the only explanation for the mid-day sunniness is that shade must be illegal in Nevada. In the middle of the day, with the sun overhead, it’s difficult to escape the laser onslaught.
Defying the laser onslaught.
Before the laser was in full blast, we packed up, pumped up, and clipped in and started our lovely descent into the valleys ahead. Something interesting about Austin is the presence of Stokes Castle. This three-story Roman architecture granite facade juts out of the hills as you approach Austin, and upon visiting it we read that it is, you guessed it, a symbol of the boom-bust mining history of Nevada.
Spokes and Stokes.
All in all, today was a pretty flat and uneventful day. One point of interest: a bit after we left Austin, we passed ~50 miles due north of the top-secret Tonopah Test Range, also known as Area 52. I was hoping to see some top-secret MiGs flying overhead, but all I saw were gorgeous blue skies and shades of purple, white, and orange cascading over the brown and green hills and mountains.
What I expected to see: yes, I expected Clint Eastwood hurling through the air before my eyes.
What I saw instead: (not my picture)
For the last few days, we’ve been in the midst of a large migration of Mormon Crickets. Today was no exception; as we pulled out of the campground, the highway was covered at times in entire swarms of the creatures. I was very proud of my agility; I’m pretty sure I only hit one on the descent this morning, whereas my teammates had hit multiple. Stanford, if you’re reading this, I think you may want to replace some of those Olympians; this kind of cricket-avoiding skill is needed on Team USA.
Also not my photo. None of us thought to take a photo of the crickets. Credit: Nevada Public Radio
It’s been really interesting to follow this route from a historical perspective. I’m giddy about all the history we see, but I take a keen interest in the history of my ancestors, the Mormon pioneers. Back in California, we followed the Mormon Emigrant Trail, which curiously was built by the only people who wanted to get away from the gold rush of 1849, a group of Mormon settlers returning to Utah.
Just before Carson City, we biked right past Genoa, Nevada, which was the first permanent non-indigenous settlement in what is now Nevada and was founded by Mormon traders. However, at that time, it wasn't considered the first permanent settlement in Nevada because the area was known as Carson County, Utah, not Carson County, Nevada. Mormons settled across Nevada and Utah, so there have been heaps of history as we’ve gone along.
Now, of course, we’ve encountered the Mormon Crickets (which, contrary to their name, can practice any religion they feel inclined to). These katydids are called “mormon crickets” mostly because they famously almost starved the folks out in Salt Lake City in 1848. When they swarm, it can be terrifying–making roads difficult to drive on, destroying crops, and wreaking havoc. Interesting fact, though: had the Mormon pioneers in Salt Lake City abandoned the crops and just eaten the plentiful crickets, they may have been much better off: Mormon crickets have a heap of nutritional value. Alas, lessons learned–next time I move 70,000 people across an ocean and continent and terraform a desert into a metropolitan area, I will be sure to use this bit of wisdom. Eat the crickets.
One thing our team has done to pass the time, though a bit gauche, is to speculate on the ‘tragic deaths’ we will come to during the trip. Mine so far is a bit vague; apparently, I will become ‘dead in Nevada’. As we only have a few more days left in the state, presumably this will happen soon; otherwise, I suppose I get immunity for a good while. To give you a taste of some of the other deaths, I can tell you that Hunter will either follow a Garmin off a cliff or meet his end when taking a really aesthetic photo on the center of the road. Kawther will, unfortunately, be consumed by vegan bears.
Guess who’s taking this aesthetic photo? A premonition of things to come…
One last detail from today, on a more serious note. On getting into the historic and picturesque Eureka, we didn’t expect to encounter any issues, but we found out Eureka is (kind of) a Sundown Town, a town that sounds a siren every evening which has its roots in a form of violent racial intimidation. When I heard the siren going off, I was really frightened—it’s a loud, blaring noise which reminded me of an Air Raid siren. Purportedly, this siren is only still extant to remind kids to go home, not to continue the long tradition of violent exclusion of minorities from towns with sundown sirens, but it was a chilling reminder nonetheless of the fact that the Jim Crow era and other post-Reconstruction racial structures still have a bearing on our society today. There are thousands of communities around the nation that still have policies and structures rooted in sundown town laws or similar structures, and one map that can help you identify such towns in your state is here.
That’s all for now. Signing off.
Ethan