Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park is a mostly arid national park in the United States. Part of the basin and range it is located east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California and extends somewhat into Nevada. Within the park there is the greatest dryland topographic relief in the contiguous United States: At 14,400 feet Mt. Whitney towers above Death Valley's floor at 282 feet below sea level.

Within the park there are two major valleys; Death Valley and Panamint Valley - both of which where formed within the last few million years.

The park has a diverse geologic history. Since its formation, the area that comprises the park has experienced at least four major periods of extensive volcanism, three or four periods of major sedimentation, several intervals of major tectonic deformation and there has also been at least two periods of glaciation.

Both Death and Panamint valleys are part of the Basin and Range topography that extends all the way to the Colorado Plateau. This unique topography has formed as the result of extension (literally the crust is being pulled apart) that is thought to be caused by the effect of the Pacific plate moving north relative to the North American plate (this is the same force behind the creation of the San Andreas fault). The basins are down-fallen blocks of crust and the ranges are up-thrusted slabs (actually the arrangement is a bit tilted to the east - in profile this would look similar to an encyclopedia leaning to one side - like so ///). The normal arrangement in the Basin and Range system is that each valley (i.e. basin) is bounded on each side by a normal fault that runs parallel to the range. Death and Panamint valleys both follow this general setup with one modification: there are parallel strike-slip faults that perpendicularly bound the central extent of Death Valley. The result of this shearing action is additional extension in the central part of Death Valley which causes a slight widening and additional subsidence there.

Places of Interest in Death Valley National Park

Badwater

File:Badwater Death Valley-thumb.jpg
Larger image

Picture of saucer-shapped mud/salt formations on the Badwater, Death Valley plain. The disks are approximately 2 - 3 metres in diameter.

Racetract playa

File:Rocks on Racetrack Playa in Death Valley-thumb.jpg
Larger image

Picture of two rocks on Racetrack Playa in Death Valley. Notice the mysterious groves leading away from the stones.

Shoreline Butte

File:Shoreline Butte Death Valley-thumb.jpg
Larger image

Picture of Shoreline Butte in Death Valley. This desert butte was once an island in a lake that filled Death Valley several times during the last ice age and probably in ice ages before that. Notice the different horizontal linear features that are thought to be ancient shorelines from this lake which scientists call Lake Manly.

Other places in the park

Black Mountains, Ubehebe, Devil's Cornfield, Devil's Golfcourse, Lake Manly, Panamint Mountains, Titus Canyon, Stovepipe Wells, Telescope Peak