Name: Death Valley National Park
Address: United States
Telephone: (760) 786-3200
Rating: 4.7

Death Valley is home to Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America, sitting at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level.

North America's Lowest Point

Death Valley holds the record for the highest recorded air temperature on Earth, a scorching 134°F (56.7°C) measured in 1913.

Hottest Recorded Temperature

Historically, twenty-mule teams were used to haul borax across Death Valley in the late 19th century. These teams became a symbol of the region's mining history.

Twenty-Mule Teams

In contrast to its low point, Death Valley also features Telescope Peak, the highest point in the park, reaching an elevation of 11,049 feet (3,368 m).

Highest Point

The Racetrack Playa is a dry lake bed famous for its 'sailing stones' – rocks that mysteriously move across the surface, leaving trails behind them. These movements are caused by a rare combination of ice, wind, and thin layers of water.

Racetrack Playa Sailing Stones

Death Valley National Park encompasses a vast area of 5,342 square miles (13,830 square kilometers), making it the largest national park in the contiguous United States.

Square Miles

Death Valley is home to the sidewinder rattlesnake, a species adapted to the desert environment. It moves with a unique sideways motion, leaving distinctive J-shaped tracks in the sand.

Unique Snake

Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park, a realm of stark beauty, holds the distinction of being the hottest, driest, and lowest national park in the United States. Its extreme environment fosters unique geological formations, like the Devil's Golf Course, a vast expanse of jagged salt crystals so rough that "only the devil could play golf on it." Surprisingly, despite its harsh reputation, Death Valley harbors pupfish, tiny survivors of a wetter era, now isolated in scattered oases and springs. The park's Badwater Basin, at 282 feet below sea level, is not only the lowest point in North America but also a surreal landscape of hexagonal salt patterns stretching to the horizon. Telescope Peak, the park's highest point, offers a dramatic contrast, showcasing snow-capped vistas in winter while the valley floor swelters. Borax mining history is etched into the landscape, with remnants of the twenty-mule teams that once hauled the mineral across the desert, a testament to human resilience in an unforgiving environment.

Introduction

Death Valley's human history stretches back 10,000 years, marked by four distinct Native American cultures. The earliest, the Nevares Spring People, were hunter-gatherers who thrived when small lakes still dotted the landscape. They were followed by the Mesquite Flat People and then the Saratoga Spring People, the latter demonstrating advanced hunting and gathering techniques and crafting intricate stone patterns. Around 1,000 years ago, the nomadic Timbisha, also known as Shoshone or Panamint, arrived, practicing vertical migration to exploit resources from valley bottoms to mountain ridges.

The California Gold Rush brought the first European descendants to Death Valley in December 1849. The Bennett-Arcane Party, lost while seeking a shortcut, stumbled into the valley. Their struggle for survival, including eating oxen and abandoning wagons, led one of the women to christen the area "Death Valley." William Lewis Manly, a member of this party, later popularized the region through his book "Death Valley in '49."

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw short-lived boom towns emerge, driven by gold and silver mining. Borax became the only consistently profitable ore, famously transported by twenty-mule teams. Later, books, radio, television, and movies further popularized Death Valley. Tourism grew in the 1920s with the construction of resorts. Death Valley's transformation culminated in its designation as a National Monument in 1933, followed by its expansion and redesignation as a National Park in 1994.

Human History

Death Valley National Park's unique biodiversity is significantly shaped by its location as a transition zone between the Mojave, Great Basin, and Sonoran deserts, supporting plant life from lower Sonoran to arctic/alpine zones. This convergence, combined with the park's dramatic elevation changes, fosters diverse plant communities, including creosote bush and mesquite with their deep tap-root systems, accessing groundwater up to 50 feet below the surface. Unlike typical Mojave Desert habitats, Death Valley harbors water-dependent ecosystems with plant and animal species found nowhere else, a result of its unique geologic history and isolated evolution since the Pleistocene epoch.

The park's varied terrain, from below-sea-level salt pans to sub-alpine peaks, hosts vegetation zones ranging from creosote bush and desert holly to pinyon-juniper and bristlecone pine woodlands. This supports a diverse wildlife population, including 51 native mammal species, 307 bird species, 36 reptile species, 3 amphibian species, and 2 native fish species. Notably, the endangered Death Valley pupfish survives in isolated populations, descendants of fish that swam from the Colorado River through ancient waterways.

Death Valley is home to over 1,000 plant species, with 23 endemic species like the rock lady, found nowhere else. The park also hosts a variety of bat species, migratory and resident birds like the roadrunner, reptiles including the Mojave Desert Tortoise, and amphibians such as the red-spotted toad. The Devils Hole pupfish, residing in the park's Devils Hole, is one of the rarest fish globally, adapted to survive in extremely warm, low-oxygen waters.

Unique Biodiversity

Death Valley National Park, a Gold Tier Dark Sky Park, offers some of the darkest night skies in the United States, earning it the highest level of designation from the International Dark-Sky Association in 2013. This prestigious classification acknowledges the park's commitment to minimizing light pollution, allowing visitors to witness astronomical objects often obscured in more urbanized areas. The park's remote location, distant from the lights of major cities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles, contributes significantly to its pristine night sky conditions.

To achieve and maintain its Dark Sky Park status, Death Valley has implemented strict lighting guidelines, directing light only where needed for safety and navigation. This includes using downward-pointing shields on light fixtures, placing lights under canopies, and turning off unnecessary outdoor lights. These efforts reduce sky glow and glare, enhancing the natural character of the night for both visitors and wildlife.

The park's dark skies provide exceptional opportunities for stargazing, night photography, and ranger-led astronomy programs, typically offered during the winter months. Popular stargazing locations include Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Harmony Borax Works, Badwater Basin, and Ubehebe Crater. The annual Death Valley Dark Sky Festival further celebrates this unique resource, offering enriching experiences led by experts in observational astronomy. Visitors can explore the cosmos, capture celestial phenomena through astrophotography, and appreciate the unparalleled clarity of the night sky.

Dark Sky Designation

Death Valley's climate earns its reputation as the hottest and driest place in North America, characterized by extreme temperatures and minimal rainfall. The world record for the highest ambient air temperature, 134°F (56.7°C), was recorded at Greenland Ranch (now Furnace Creek) on July 10, 1913. Summer temperatures frequently exceed 120°F (49°C), with overnight lows remaining in the 90s°F (30s°C). The average rainfall is less than 2 inches (5 cm) annually, with some years recording no measurable rainfall at all. This aridity results from a significant rain shadow effect, as four major mountain ranges block moisture from the Pacific Ocean.

The valley's depth and shape contribute to its extreme heat. As a long, narrow basin 282 feet (86 m) below sea level, surrounded by high, steep mountains, heat becomes trapped. The highest surface temperature ever recorded in Death Valley was 201.0°F (93.9°C) on July 15, 1972, at Furnace Creek. The longest streak of consecutive days with temperatures above 100°F (38°C) was 154 days in the summer of 2001. The park's springs are fed by a regional aquifer sourced from the Pleistocene ice ages, a resource diminishing faster than it can be replenished in the current climate. Despite the aridity, occasional intense storms can cause flash floods, dramatically altering the landscape.

Extreme Climate

Death Valley National Park reveals a complex geological history through its diverse formations, showcasing at least 23 sedimentary units, two major unconformities, and a distinct group of related formations. The oldest rocks, metamorphosed by intense heat and pressure, date back 1.7 billion years and were later intruded by granite 1.4 billion years ago, followed by nearly 500 million years of erosion. Marine deposition between 1.2 billion and 800 million years ago formed thick sequences of conglomerate, mudstone, and carbonate rock, including stromatolites and potential glacial deposits from the Snowball Earth event.

Around 550 million years ago, sandy mudflats transitioned into a carbonate platform that persisted for 300 million years. The area then shifted to an active margin in the Mesozoic era, marked by subduction, volcanoes, and mountain building. Crustal stretching began approximately 16 million years ago, leading to the Basin and Range province, which, by 2 to 3 million years ago, ripped apart the Death Valley area, creating Death Valley and Panamint Valley.

Igneous activity from 12 to 4 million years ago produced both intrusive and extrusive rocks, with basaltic magma forming cinder cones and lava flows. Hydrothermal systems reworked some volcanic rocks, creating colorful mineral formations like the Pliocene-aged Artist Drive Formation. Sediment filled the subsiding Furnace Creek Basin, resulting in the 7,000-foot-thick Furnace Creek Formation, known for its lakebed sediments and boron deposits. The four-million-year-old Funeral Formation further filled the basin with conglomerates, sand, and volcanic material. Pleistocene glacial periods led to large lakes, including Lake Manly, which eventually dried up, concentrating salts and minerals and forming the desert environment seen today.

Death Valley National Park

Did You Know?

North America's Lowest Point

Hottest Recorded Temperature

Twenty-Mule Teams

Highest Point

Location