An abandoned copper mine and former EPA Superfund site fills with water, where ducks float, in the "wasteland" of the Great Basin Desert. Anaconda Copper Company was notorious in the copper mining industry of the Cold War era with headquarters in Butte, Montana, and operations as far as Chile. This open copper pit area is in a former company town called Weed Heights, right outside Yerington, Nevada, a city a few miles south of the loneliest highway, U.S. Route 50. Sagebrush dots the purple-hued mountains all around you, like tufts of embroidered yarn you could run the tips of your fingers across. In the arid high desert autumn sun, their golden yellow flower blooms light up the desolation like a blinking neon casino sign. The Great Basin Desert has been extracted for mining, destroyed for nuclear bomb and weapons testing, and, now, highly sought after for the data center development boom. My research analyzes the power of the perception of place and the ways in which everyday people resist the destruction and damage of unbridled pollution. Political elites and scientists designated this place as a wasteland but forgot about the resilient communities living on it.