Black Rock Desert in the context of "Great Basin"

Pershing County is a county in the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 6,650. Its county seat is Lovelock. The county is listed as Nevada Historical Marker 17. The marker is at the courthouse in Lovelock.

The Black Rock Desert, location for the annual Burning Man event, is partially in the county.

Burning Man is a week-long large-scale desert event focused on "community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance" held annually in the Western United States. The event's name comes from its ceremony on the penultimate night of the event: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred to as the Man, the Saturday evening before Labor Day. Since 1990, the event has been at Black Rock City in northwestern Nevada, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno. According to Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey in 2004, the event is guided by ten stated principles: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.

Burning Man features no headliners or scheduled performers; participants create all the art, activities, and events. Artwork includes experimental and interactive sculptures, buildings, performances, and art cars, among other media. These contributions are inspired by a theme chosen annually by the Burning Man Project. NPR said of Burning Man in 2019, "Once considered an underground gathering for bohemians and free spirits of all stripes, Burning Man has since evolved into a destination for social media influencers, celebrities and the Silicon Valley elite."

Lovelock Aerial Gunnery Range was a World War II facility in two Nevada areas used for "aerial gunnery, strafing, dive bombing [and] rocket fire". By 21 November 1944, the Lovelock Range had been approved by the Secretary of the Navy to be developed for Naval Air Station Fallon, and on 13 January 1945, "Lovelock Air to Air" began when "leased under the Second War Powers Act". By February 1945, land was being acquired for the North Range in the Black Rock Desert which was 1,122 sq mi (2,910 km) that included 64.4 sq mi (167 km) of "Patented" (leased private) land. The South Range in the Granite Springs Valley was 2,436 sq mi (6,310 km), and in March 1945 "1920 Acres more" were added.

The post-war range was reactivated in October 1945 when the United States Navy closed more than 1,563 sq mi (4,050 km) to the public in the two Lovelock Aerial Gunnery Range regions. The Department of the Interior permit for the North Portion was cancelled by a 6 March 1946 letter, and the Bureau of Yards and Docks was directed to cancel the leases for the South Portion on 7 January 1947.

The Burning Man Project is an American organization that annually plans, manages, and builds Burning Man on the dry lake of the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada. The company coordinates the year-round, behind-the-scenes work needed to build and remove a temporary city of 80,000 people.

Burning Man ticket sales provide a multi million-dollar budget for the organization. These revenues help the organization obtain required permits from the Bureau of Land Management, rent portable toilets and equipment, secure medical, fire, and law enforcement services, and cover other organizational expenses.

This list of North American deserts identifies areas of the continent that receive less than 10 in (250 mm) annual precipitation. The "North American Desert" is also the term for a large U.S. Level 1 ecoregion (EPA) of the North American Cordillera, in the Deserts and xeric shrublands biome (WWF). The continent's deserts are largely between the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Madre Oriental on the east, and the rain shadow–creating Cascades, Sierra Nevada, Transverse, and Peninsular Ranges on the west. The North American xeric region of over 95,751 sq mi (247,990 km) includes three major deserts, numerous smaller deserts, and large non-desert arid regions in the Western United States and in northeastern, central, and northwestern Mexico.