The Burning Man festival on the Black Rock Desert playa, north of Reno, Nevada, requires certain areas to be closed to public access during the event. Here are the closure details. Burning Man is held within the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a specially designated part of Nevada's public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Burning Man Closures
Public access to the Burning Man site and immediate vicinity will be closed from August 1 to September 19, 2011. Burning Man has an event permit from the Bureau of Land Management for the event site and controls access to event attendees. Law enforcement and other services, such as medical emergency response, are provided by appropriate agencies. According to the BLM, "closures and restrictions are necessary to provide for public safety and to protect public resources." For questions or comments, contact Cory Roegner at croegner@blm.gov or call 775-623-1500.
Where are the Burning Man Closures?
Public access to the Black Rock playa is provided at several points from the road running along the west side. During the closure period, the 8-Mile playa access point from this highway will be reserved for Burning Man ticket holders. All other access points to the playa will remain open to the public. The rest of the playa outside the Burning Man site, over 97,000 acres, will remain open to the public.
Where is the Black Rock Playa?
The Black Rock Desert playa is a dry lake bed 100 miles north of Reno on Nevada 447. The town of Gerlach is at the southern end of the playa and the main gateway to the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area. The Burning Man site is on the playa about 8 miles north of Gerlach and only occupies a small portion of the vast Conservation Area. Because the Burning Man organization does such an exemplary job of cleaning up and restoring the site, it is virtually impossible to tell before and after the event that Black Rock City and around 50,000 people were there for the week of the event.
Source: Bureau of Land Management (BLM) press release.
