Celebrating Public Lands in Little High Rock Canyon

Little High Rock Canyon in northwestern Nevada is part of the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon-Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area (NCA). The NCA is part of the the BLM's National Conservation Lands Program which is dedicated to conserving, protecting, and restoring nationally significant landscapes such as National Monuments, National Conservation Areas, Wilderness Areas, Wilderness Study Areas, Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Scenic and Historic Trails.

Little High Rock Canyon's history is all around interesting, but among its stories is the tragic affair, in 1911. involving a family of Native Americans and Basque ranchers. The Native American group's patriarch was Mike Daggett (among other names), although in popular lore he is now known as Shoshone Mike. The group had fled south from Idaho after a rather murky incident and camped in the Little High Rock area during a brutal winter. They resorted to killing cattle stocked in the area, Three Basque ranchers who came out to check on reports of animals being slaughtered were found dead in the canyon. Shoshone Mike and his group were blamed for the murders and subsequently hunted down by a posse from Winnemucca and nearly all were killed when caught north of Golconda. The whole sad story is told in Frank Bergon's Shoshone Mike. At the time and afterward, the affair was sensationalized as the "last Indian battle of the West,"

​September 30, 2017 is National Public Lands Day. To celebrate this we are going to share images of public lands from our archives every day in September.

#welovepubliclands #publiclandsproud #publiclandowner #NPLD

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