Tonopah, Nevada in the context of "Unincorporated towns in Nevada"

The Toiyabe Range is a mountain range in Lander and Nye counties, Nevada, United States. Most of the range is included within the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. The highest point in the range, near its southern end, is Arc Dome (11,788 feet, 3592 m), an area protected as the Arc Dome Wilderness. The highest point in Lander County, Bunker Hill, is also located within the Toiyabe Range. The range starts in northwestern Nye County north of Tonopah, Nevada and runs approximately 120 miles (190 km) north-northeast into southern Lander County, making it the second longest range in the state.

The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is a solar thermal power project with an installed capacity of 110 megawatt (MW) and 1.1 gigawatt-hours of energy storage located near Tonopah, about 190 miles (310 km) northwest of Las Vegas. Crescent Dunes is the first commercial concentrated solar power (CSP) plant with a central receiver tower and advanced molten salt energy storage technology at full scale (110 MW), following the experimental Solar Two and Gemasolar in Spain at 50 MW. As of 2023, it is operated by its new owner, Vinci SA, and in a new contract with NV Energy, it now supplies solar energy at night only, drawing on thermal energy stored each day.

Startup energy venture company SolarReserve (created via seed funding), US Renewables Group, and United Technologies were the original owners of Tonopah Solar Energy LLC, the owner and operator of the Crescent Dunes plant. The Crescent Dunes project was subsequently backed by a $737 million in U.S. government loan guarantees and by Tonopah partnering with Cobra Thermosolar Plants, Inc. The overall venture had a projected cost of less than $1 billion. The plant suffered several design, construction and technical problems and, having not produced power since April 2019, its sole customer, NV Energy, subsequently terminated its contract. Bloomberg reported that NV Energy was not allowed to sever its agreement with the plant until after the DoE took over the shuttered plant in August 2019.

Southern Nevada (SNV) is a region and the southern portion of the U.S. state of Nevada which includes the Las Vegas Valley. It also includes the areas in and around Pahrump and Pioche. Tonopah and Hawthorne are sometimes also referred to as part of Southern Nevada, but all organizations based in the Las Vegas area, such as the Southern Nevada Health District, effectively limit the term to the Las Vegas Valley.

Geographically, parts of Southern Nevada are within the Mojave Desert. The population of the region, as measured by the 2020 U.S. Census, is 2,327,680, with 2,265,461 living in the Las Vegas Valley (i.e., Clark County). Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Southern Nevada have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Las Vegas's and Southern Nevada’s water security.

Nye County is a county in the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 51,591. Its county seat is Tonopah. At 18,159 square miles (47,030 km), Nye is Nevada's largest county by area and the third-largest county in the contiguous United States, behind San Bernardino County of California and Coconino County of Arizona.

Nye County comprises the Pahrump micropolitan statistical area, which is included in the Las Vegas-Henderson combined statistical area.

Arc Dome is the highest mountain of the Toiyabe Range in northwestern Nye County, Nevada, United States. It is the thirteenth-highest mountain in the state. Arc Dome also ranks as the second-most topographically prominent peak in Nye County and the eighth-most prominent peak in the state. The peak is located about 53 miles (85 km) north of the community of Tonopah, within the Arc Dome Wilderness of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

Arc Dome is sometimes confused with Toiyabe Dome. The fact that the summit benchmark is marked “Toiyabe Dome” only adds to this confusion. However, these are separate peaks. Toiyabe Dome at 11,361 feet (3,463 m) is about 5 miles (8.0 km) southeast of Arc Dome, above the small community of Carvers, Nevada.