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Location Information:
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Black Rock Desert is an arid region
in the northern Nevada section of
the Great Basin with a lakebed that
is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake
Lahontan. The region is notable for
its paleogeologic features, as an
area of 19th-century Emigrant Trails
to California, and as a venue for
rocketry and land speed records. The
Black Rock Desert region is in
northwestern Nevada and the
northwestern Great Basin. The playa
extends for approximately 100 mi
(160 km) northeast from the towns of
Gerlach and Empire, between the
Jackson Mountains to the east and
the Calico Mountains to the west.
The Black Rock Desert is separated
into two arms by the Black Rock
Range.
Burning Man is an annual event held
in the Black Rock Desert in northern
Nevada, in the United States. The
event starts on the Sunday before
and ends on the day of the American
Labor Day holiday. It takes its name
from the ritual burning of a large
wooden effigy on Saturday evening.
The event is described by many
participants as an experiment in
community, radical self-expression,
and radical self-reliance.
1997
was a pivotal year for the event.
The car-friendly, open dry lake had
become over-run with 10,000
attendees and was deemed too
dangerous to continue in the same
way with unrestricted driving. To
implement a ban on driving and
re-create the event as a
pedestrian/bicycle/art car-only
event, it was decided to move the
event to private property. Fly Ranch
with the adjoining Hualapai mini dry
lake-bed was chosen. This brought
Burning Man into the jurisdiction of
Washoe County permitting. To comply
with the new permit requirements and
to manage the increased liability
load, the organizers formed Black
Rock City, LLC.
Since
then, one of the challenges faced by
the LLC has been trying to balance
the freedom of participants - a
defining element of the experience -
with the requirements of BLM and
various law-enforcement groups. Over
the years, numerous restrictions
have been put in place.
One
notable restriction to attendees is
the 7-mile long temporary plastic
fence that surrounds the event and
defines the pentagon of land used by
the event on the southern edge of
the Black Rock dry lake. This 4-foot (1.2 meter)
high barrier is known as the "trash
fence" because its initial use was
to catch wind-blown debris that
might escape from campsites during
the event. Since 2002, the area
beyond this fence has not been
accessible to Burning Man
participants during the week of the
event
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