No dirt to dig up here: Soil from Nevada in D.C. debut

By Phoebe Sweet (contact)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Orovada doesn’t have a lot going on. It doesn’t even have a stoplight.

But the tiny farming community nestled against the western slope of the Santa Rosa Mountains 50 miles north of Winnemucca has staked one claim to fame — its dirt.

Thanks to a group of schoolchildren, Orovada has a namesake: Nevada’s official soil, designated as such during the 2001 legislative session. Until then it had been merely the “unofficial” state soil, according to Assembly minutes.

Now orovada — the soil, not the town — is going national. The Smithsonian Institution opened the “Dig It! The Secrets of Soil” exhibit in Washington, D.C., last week featuring orovada alongside 53 other official soils from U.S. states, territories and the District of Columbia.

“There is more life under our feet than there is on the surface of the planet,” said Brenda Buck, an associate professor at UNLV’s Geosciences Department who specializes in soil science.

She said she hopes the exhibit raises awareness that dirt is a natural resource like air or water.

Although water makes all the splashy headlines in Southern Nevada, the soil is just as important to our environment, she said.

But how did orovada, once just another dirt, get to be the official dirt?

Nevada’s newest representative in the nation’s capital covers about 360,000 acres of the state’s most prized agricultural land — all of it in Northern and central Nevada.

According to the Legislature’s Web site, orovada is coarse and loamy, and because it contains volcanic ash it needs less water for irrigation.

Alfalfa and other hays, wheat, barley and grass, as well as nonagricultural plants such as sagebrush, thrive in orovada.

“I suspect the reason it was selected is because it’s very extensive and it’s prime farmland, which is kind of hard to come by in Nevada — especially Southern Nevada,” said Von Winkel, restoration ecologist with the Springs Preserve in Las Vegas.

After all, what has Southern soil done for us lately besides kill the lovely pair of dwarf oleanders in my back yard? It may be a fertile breeding ground for casino foundations and strip malls, but not so much for delicate plantlife.

And the science of soil has historically been based on agriculture, which means money and food. Cutting-edge soil science like the kind Buck is working on at UNLV has moved away from agricultural soils, but the history is still important, she said.

As for the history behind orovada’s rise to national prominence: Nearly a year before it won its designation, eight Orovada residents, ages 10 through 12, made the case for the dirt to the Legislative Committee on Public Lands during an interim session. Their pitch proved to be persuasive for a soil that, despite all the hype, is actually half-sand.

Danielle Black, then a sixth grader, said the designation was needed to enable people to think of Nevada as more than just casinos, night life and desert.