Mojave Desert
desert in southwestern United States
The Mojave Desert ( ; Mohave: Hayikwiir Mat'aar; Spanish: Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named after the indigenous Mohave people, it is located primarily in southeastern California and southwestern Nevada, with small portions extending into Arizona and Utah.
The Mojave Desert, together with the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Great Basin deserts, form a larger North American desert. Of these, the Mojave is the smallest and driest. It displays typical basin and range topography, generally having a pattern of a series of parallel mountain ranges and valleys. It is also the site of Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America. The Mojave Desert is often colloquially called the "high desert", as most of it lies between 2,000 and 4,000 feet (610 and 1,220 m). It supports a diversity of flora and fauna.
The 54,000-square-mile (140,000 km2) desert supports a number of human activities, including recreation, ranching, and military training. The Mojave Desert also contains various silver, tungsten, iron and gold deposits.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q184355. VIAF identifies the subject as 316747055. The Library of Congress control number is sh85086496. Authority coordinates are 35.008, -115.475. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mojave Desert” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.