The Soda Lakes are two lakes located northwest of Fallon, Nevada

Fallon, Nevada

-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 7,536 people, 3,004 households, and 1,877 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,474.1 people per square mile . There were 3,336 housing units at an average density of 1,095.2 per square mile...

. They occupy two basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

ic maar

Maar

A maar is a broad, low-relief volcanic crater that is caused by a phreatomagmatic eruption, an explosion caused by groundwater coming into contact with hot lava or magma. A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow crater lake. The name comes from the local Moselle...

volcanoes which may have erupted in the last 1500 years. The larger lake (called Soda Lake) is somewhat elongated, stretching 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) in length, while the smaller one (Little Soda Lake) is 200 metres (656.2 ft) across. According to an early study of Soda Lakes, Russell (1885) describes the Soda Lake basin as follows:

"The rim of the larger lake in its highest part rises 80 feet above the surrounding desert, and is 165 feet higher than the surface of the lake which it incloses. The outer slope of the cone is gentle and merges almost imperceptibly with the desert surface; but the inner slope is abrupt and at times approaches the perpendicular. A series of careful soundings gives 147 feet as the greatest depth of the lake. The total depth of the depression is therefore 312 feet, and its bottom is 232 feet lower than the general surface of the desert near at hand."

Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, describes the salt lakes in his autobiographical novel Roughing It:

"During the afternoon we passed Sweetwater Creek, Independence Rock, Devil's Gate, and the Devil's Gap. The latter were wild specimens of rugged scenery, and full of interest—we were in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, now. And we also passed by "Alkali" or "Soda Lake," and we woke up to the fact that our journey had stretched a long way across the world when the driver said that the Mormons often came there from Great Salt Lake City to haul away saleratus. He said that a few days gone by they had shoveled up enough pure saleratus from the ground (it was a dry lake) to load two wagons, and that when they got these two wagon-loads of a drug that cost them nothing, to Salt Lake, they could sell it for twenty-five cents a pound."