The Forgotten Fish of an “Inconsista(e)nt River”

In 1826, Jedediah Smith, legendary trapper and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, ventured west across the deserts of the southwest in search of fur. His path followed one used by those native to the arid land that would later be called the Mojave Desert. His path crisscrossed a sandy, scrub-lined riverbed for nearly 100 miles south to the foot of a mountain range whose tributaries spawned the river. Because it mostly flowed underground, he named the dry watercourse that paralleled his trail the "Inconsistant River"(sic) on a map that later traced his westward wonderings. To this day, except for a brief stretch above and below the Upper and Lower Narrows, the waters of Mojave River still flow almost entirely underground from its headwaters at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains to its terminus of Soda and Silver dry lakes sandwiching the small desert town of Baker. It was the more stable headwaters of Deep (see map insert) and Holcomb creeks and the West Fork of the Mojave River, that a forgotten fish, the Mohave tui chub, the river’s only native fish, called home on this "Inconsistant River".