Customer Reviews

Benchmark Nevada Road & Recreation Atlas

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3 star:		(1)
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I have lived in Nevada and have traveled extensively throughout its rural areas since the 1980's. Most people don't realize how many "roads" there are in Nevada (1000's) that exist solely as remnants from mining booms, power line access development, ranching, military, and the like. The majority of unpaved roads shown on other atlases are not maintained by the counties they are in.

Now herein lies the magic of a Benchmark atlas. What you see in its pages are the result of extensive, local research and field verification work. The bolded-in-red-dashed routes are indeed well-traveled, and maintained in good condition (albeit a little washboard from time-to-time which is very normal).

Hunting area numbers, phone numbers, and other detailed local information is also provided. The overlaps from section to section are well-buffered, meaning, if you flip a page, there's an above average amount shown from the previous page :)

I love my Benchmark and have used it so much that the cover's stitching staples wore out and the cover came off! I have yet to come across any inaccuracies in the year that I have owned this atlas. KUDOS!!! GREAT JOB!!!

These are the best maps for understanding what you are viewing while you are traveling. If you want to know what you are looking at while you are driving, these are the maps for you. They are kind of a cross between a topo map, a relief map, and a gas station map.

This atlas has best follow along information for my back country adventures on BLM land at Blackrock Desert. I did hiking and driving on Playa.

I bought Benchmark's California and Nevada Atlases for a geology field trip to Death Valley. Part of the field trip was a tour of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the national nuclear waste site, on the Nevada Nuclear Test Range. That tour handed out a map of the Test Range but it had quite a bit less detail than the Benchmark map. The Benchmark map showed not only Yucca Mountain, but also Area 51 (and several runways), site of Lockheed's Skunk Works, once supersecret but no longer (Wikipedia for example), and also the sites of a number of well known nuclear tests (I had earlier noticed that the county containing the nuclear test site (Nye County) is mushroom shaped).

The Benchmark atlases contain several sets of maps, starting with a few that give an overview and set the context of the detailed maps. This is a nice feature, sometimes it is hard to see the bigger picture from only the detailed maps. Also the maps have some overlap, so the edges and corners do not get shortchanged. A latitude/longitude grid could also be very useful if lost but you know your coordinates (if you can call that lost). The shaded relied gives a good feel for the terraine, much better (but less quantitative) than a contour map, and I was able to match the map to the visible scenery to get a good idea of our location while traveling to various field trip points. If you like maps you'll probably like Benchmark maps.

This book is good for my intended purpose of seeing what to expect on my planned road trip from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon. However the information on Las Vegas is noticeably dated.