Four Mile

Four Mile is a 24,093-acre Inventoried Roadless Area in the Hot Creek Range of central Nevada, on the Austin-Tonopah Ranger District of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. The terrain is mountainous and montane, organized around Hot Creek Pass, Dead Cow Ridge, and a fan of canyons — Fourmile Canyon, Wood Canyon, Box Canyon, Hot Creek Canyon, and Corral Canyon — that drain east into Little Fish Lake Valley and west into Fourmile Flats and Pott Hole Valley. Hydrology here is unusually significant for a Great Basin range. The Fourmile Canyon-Hot Creek headwaters rise inside the area, and a chain of springs — Pott Hole Spring, Page Springs, Upper Warm Spring, Iron Spring, Dembi Gaddi, and Old Dugan Place Hot Spring — feeds Fish Lake Valley Creek and the closed-basin wetlands below.

The vegetation reads as a layered cross-section of the central Great Basin. Lower slopes carry Great Basin Big Sagebrush Shrubland and Intermountain Salt Desert Scrub, with greasewood flats and rubber rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) holding the alkaline benches. Upslope, Great Basin Pinyon-Juniper Woodland anchors the middle elevations: single-leaf pine (Pinus monophylla) and Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) cover the canyon shoulders, with green Mormon-tea (Ephedra viridis) and black sagebrush (Artemisia nova) in the openings. Wyoming Indian-paintbrush (Castilleja linariifolia), panhandle prickly-pear (Opuntia polyacantha), and Woods' rose (Rosa woodsii) thread through the understory, while western blue iris (Iris missouriensis) marks moist seeps. Where springs surface, narrow ribbons of Great Basin Foothill Streamside Woodland and Rocky Mountain Subalpine Streamside Woodland develop along the channels, with hairy-tuft four o'clock (Mirabilis comata) on disturbed banks.

The spring system at Four Mile is the ecological hinge. The Hot Creek Toad (Anaxyrus monfontanus), assessed by IUCN as Critically Endangered, occupies these warm spring outflows. The Railroad Valley Springfish (Crenichthys nevadae), IUCN Vulnerable, is endemic to thermal springs in this drainage. Wetland margins draw white-faced ibis (Plegadis chihi), American avocet (Recurvirostra americana), black-necked stilt (Himantopus mexicanus), and Wilson's phalarope (Phalaropus tricolor); yellow-headed blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) nests in the marsh edges. On the rocky slopes above, bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) cross between canyons, yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris) sun on talus, and great basin collared lizard (Crotaphytus bicinctores) and desert horned lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos) hunt the open ground. Golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) hunt the ridgelines for white-tailed antelope squirrel (Ammospermophilus leucurus) and gophersnake (Pituophis catenifer). Yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus) uses the streamside cottonwoods. Portions of this area fall within the potential range of several federally listed species; see the Conservation section for details.

A traveler entering through Fourmile Canyon climbs from greasewood flats into juniper shade, the air shifting from dry alkali to the resin of pinyon. The trail crosses a spring-fed runnel where the bank is suddenly green with iris and rose, then opens onto Hot Creek Pass with Dead Cow Ridge on the south horizon. From the pass, Little Fish Lake Valley spreads below — sage to the rim, marsh glinting at the valley floor — and on a still morning, the only sound is wind in the pinyon and the thin call of an avocet rising off the water.

The Four Mile Inventoried Roadless Area lies within the Hot Creek Range of central Nevada, in Nye County, on lands long inhabited by the Newe — the Western Shoshone. The Newe's traditional territory covered southern Idaho, the central part of Nevada, portions of northwestern Utah, and the Death Valley region of southern California [11]. Bands organized themselves around foodways: in nearby Railroad Valley, the Tsaiduka were known as "tule eaters" [10]. Rock shelters in central Nevada show archaeological evidence for ancestral Newe seasonal occupation for more than 7,000 years [5]. Anthropologist Julian Steward documented Newe families living in the Hot Creek and Tybo locations and described the lifeways and resources they used [5]. In 1863, the Treaty of Ruby Valley formally recognized most of Nevada as the Newe (Western Shoshone) Territory [5].

European-era contact began with fur trappers between 1827 and 1846, who began the destructive cycle of exploiting natural resources [11]. Jedediah Smith exited Hot Creek Canyon and camped near the mouth of Sixmile Canyon on June 10, 1827, documenting interactions with Newe people [5]. Silver was first discovered at Hot Creek in early 1865, and the Hot Creek Mining District was organized in February 1866 [6]. The Tybo mining district, immediately southeast of Four Mile, was reportedly discovered in 1865 when an Indian led a party of white men to valuable ore in the Hot Creek mountain range [9]. A lead smelter was built in the canyon in 1874, the same year Tybo was settled [9]. By 1876, Tybo had grown into a boom town of about 1,000 residents — Irish, Cornish, and Chinese miners — with five stores, two blacksmiths, a post office, and many saloons [9]. Smelting required an insatiable appetite for wood and charcoal, and each set of charcoal kilns is estimated to have consumed 4,000 acres of trees over their short life-spans [5]. The first Tybo boom ended around 1881 when ore quality dropped; the last mill closed in 1937 [7].

Grazing pressure followed mining. In 1906, an estimated 96,000 transient sheep ranged the entire length of the Toiyabe Range [4]. The Toiyabe Forest Reserve was established the following year, in 1907, a year in which 63,000 sheep and 8,000 cattle forged through the range [4]. The 1907 federal inventory recorded the Toiyabe at 625,040 acres, with its latest proclamation dated March 1, 1907 [3]. Toiyabe Forest Reserve, NV, established by Presidential Proclamation, March 1, 1907 [1]. President Warren G. Harding's Proclamation 1599 of May 25, 1921, modified the boundaries of the Toiyabe National Forest, in the State of Nevada, by excluding certain lands therefrom and by adding certain lands thereto [2]. Today the area is managed within the Austin-Tonopah Ranger District of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and is protected under the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

The Four Mile Inventoried Roadless Area covers 24,093 acres in the Hot Creek Range of central Nevada. Its montane terrain — Hot Creek Pass, Dead Cow Ridge, and a fan of canyons including Fourmile, Box, Wood, and Hot Creek — anchors a hydrologically significant spring system that feeds the Fourmile Canyon-Hot Creek headwaters and Fish Lake Valley Creek. Roughly half the area is Great Basin Pinyon-Juniper Woodland, with another quarter in Great Basin Dry Sagebrush Shrubland; salt desert scrub, mountain sagebrush steppe, and narrow streamside woodlands occupy the remainder. The Hot Creek Toad (IUCN Critically Endangered) and the Railroad Valley Springfish (IUCN Vulnerable) depend on this landscape's intact warm-spring outflows.

Vital Resources Protected

• Headwater Spring Integrity: The Fourmile Canyon-Hot Creek headwaters and a string of springs — Pott Hole, Page, Upper Warm, Iron, Dembi Gaddi, and Old Dugan Place Hot Spring — emerge inside the roadless boundary. Without road crossings, sediment loading, or surface diversions, these spring-fed channels retain the stable temperature, flow, and water quality that the Hot Creek Toad and the Railroad Valley Springfish require. The roadless condition keeps the small thermal refuges intact and preserves the hydrological link between subsurface aquifers and the downslope wetlands of Little Fish Lake Valley.

• Pinyon-Juniper Woodland Continuity: Great Basin Pinyon-Juniper Woodland covers about half the area in continuous stands across canyon shoulders and ridges. Roadlessness preserves the closed-canopy structure of single-leaf pine and Utah juniper that supports cavity-nesting birds, mule deer winter range, and the soil microbiotic crusts that resist cheatgrass conversion. The unbroken woodland also keeps the historic mosaic of fuels and openings, on which fire-adapted understory species like green Mormon-tea and black sagebrush depend.

• Sagebrush-to-Riparian Elevational Gradient: From Intermountain Greasewood Flat at the basin margin upward through Great Basin Big Sagebrush Shrubland, mountain sagebrush steppe, and the narrow ribbons of Great Basin and Rocky Mountain Subalpine Streamside Woodland, the area preserves an unbroken elevational gradient. This continuity supports bighorn sheep movement between summer crags and lower winter range, and sustains migration corridors used by Wilson's Phalarope and Yellow-billed Cuckoo between the Hot Creek wetlands and the upland sagebrush.

Potential Effects of Road Construction

• Spring Hydrology Disruption: Road grading, fill, and drainage structures across spring-fed channels alter surface flow paths, intercept shallow groundwater, and route sediment directly into thermal outflows. Once the warm-spring substrate is buried or the channel re-graded, the narrow microhabitat the Hot Creek Toad and Railroad Valley Springfish occupy is functionally lost — these endemic populations cannot relocate to other drainages, and re-establishing the original thermal-flow regime after construction is rarely feasible.

• Cheatgrass Invasion via Disturbed Corridors: Road construction exposes mineral soil, fragments biological soil crusts, and creates a continuous linear disturbance — the precise conditions that allow Bromus tectorum and other annual grasses to establish in pinyon-juniper, sagebrush shrubland, and salt desert scrub. Once cheatgrass colonizes, it shortens the fire-return interval, eliminates fire-intolerant pinyon and sagebrush, and converts the system to annual grassland, a transition that is generally irreversible at the landscape scale.

• Pinyon-Juniper Fragmentation and Edge Effect: Road clearing through Great Basin Pinyon-Juniper Woodland breaks closed-canopy stands into edges and patches, increasing wind exposure, surface drying, and access for livestock and off-route vehicle use. The fragmented woodland loses the structural complexity that supports cavity-nesting birds and winter ungulate cover, and re-growth of pinyon and juniper to mature stand structure takes well over a century.

The Four Mile Inventoried Roadless Area covers 24,093 acres of mountainous, montane country in the Hot Creek Range on the Austin-Tonopah Ranger District of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. There are no maintained system trails, no designated trailheads, and no developed campgrounds inside the boundary. All recreation here is dispersed and self-supported. Visitors approach from gravel and two-track roads on the Forest's perimeter and travel cross-country on foot or horseback through Fourmile Canyon, Wood Canyon, Box Canyon, Hot Creek Canyon, and Corral Canyon, climbing toward Hot Creek Pass and Dead Cow Ridge.

Backcountry hiking and horseback riding are the principal foot-powered activities. Routes follow canyon bottoms and stockways used historically by sheep and cattle. The pinyon-juniper woodland on the canyon shoulders provides shade and orientation; the open sagebrush flats below give long sightlines across Little Fish Lake Valley and Pott Hole Valley. Travelers should expect dry conditions, exposed sun, and rocky footing — water sources are limited to the spring system at Pott Hole Spring, Page Springs, Upper Warm Spring, Iron Spring, and Old Dugan Place Hot Spring, all of which should be filtered. Dispersed camping on the Humboldt-Toiyabe is permitted following standard Forest rules; pack out all waste and use existing bare ground rather than creating new disturbance.

Hunting is a primary draw. The area lies within Nevada Department of Wildlife management units that support general-season and limited-entry hunts for mule deer in the pinyon-juniper and mountain mahogany stands, and for desert bighorn sheep on the rocky upper slopes around Hot Creek Pass and Dead Cow Ridge. Coyote, jackrabbit, and chukar hunting are also available across the sagebrush slopes and rimrock. All hunting requires current Nevada tags and licenses; check Nevada Department of Wildlife regulations and unit boundaries before the season.

Birding and wildlife viewing center on the spring-fed wetlands and the elevational gradient between greasewood flats and montane sagebrush. Observers working the canyon mouths and spring outflows have a reasonable chance of recording white-faced ibis, American avocet, black-necked stilt, Wilson's phalarope, eared grebe, hooded merganser, northern pintail, and yellow-headed blackbird in the wetland margins, with mountain bluebird in the open pinyon-juniper edges and mourning dove across the sagebrush. Raptor viewing is strong: golden eagle and bald eagle work the ridgelines, hunting white-tailed antelope squirrel and gophersnake on the open slopes. The streamside cottonwoods host yellow-billed cuckoo. The Hot Creek Toad and the Great Basin spadefoot are active around the warm springs after summer rain. Anglers will not find a stocked trout fishery here — the spring system supports the endemic Railroad Valley Springfish, which is protected and not a sport species.

Photography rewards a slow approach to the springs at first light, when bighorn sheep cross from canyon to canyon and the sagebrush turns silver. Long lenses are useful for raptors on the rimrock; macro work at the spring margins picks up Wyoming Indian-paintbrush, western blue iris, and showy milkweed. Winter access is limited by snow on Hot Creek Pass and on the unimproved approach roads.

The recreation profile of Four Mile is built on its roadless condition. Without graded roads through the canyons, the spring system stays uncontaminated for the species that depend on it; the bighorn herd retains the unbroken slope it needs to move between summer and winter range; and hunters, hikers, and birders find the kind of long-line, low-density backcountry that exists only where motor access ends at the boundary.