Burning Man's Black Rock City is built in which Nevada desert?

Burning Man’s Black Rock City is built in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

Black Rock Desert is a broad, extremely flat playa in northwestern Nevada, formed from the dried bed of an ancient lake. Its hard surface is primarily composed of fine clay and silt, creating the vast open setting that allows Burning Man’s temporary city, art installations, and camps to be assembled each year.

The Burning Man event began in 1986 on San Francisco’s Baker Beach. In 1990, organizers moved the gathering to the Black Rock Desert, where the remote playa provided far more room. The event has used the Nevada site since returning there in 1998 after a one-year relocation.

Black Rock City is not a permanent settlement. Volunteers and participants construct its roads, camps, services, and distinctive semicircular street plan for the event, then remove the infrastructure afterward. Nearby Nevada deserts such as Smoke Creek and the Great Basin’s other playas are separate landscapes, not the Burning Man site.