Beowawe, Nevada

Southwest of Beowawe, at least twenty-eight geysers once erupted from a long terrace of pale mineral crust. It was the second largest geyser field on the continent, behind Yellowstone. Travelers first described it in eighteen sixty-nine. Most of the geysers went off less than an hour apart. The tallest, known simply as Beowawe Geyser, threw water thirty feet into the air. In the fall of nineteen fifty-nine, crews drilled geothermal wells nearby. Within a year, discharge from uncapped wells had pulled the water away. The geysers stopped. The springs dried up. By nineteen sixty-two, the water table sat nearly three hundred feet below the ground, in a place where it had once reached the surface on its own. Then came the deliberate part. Crews packed the dormant vents with mineral crust and debris, blaming escaping steam for weak well output. A brief flurry of activity returned in nineteen eighty-six. By the next year it was over.