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Death
Valley
Something perversely fascinating about being in one of the hottest places
on earth—not to mention its sinister name—has drawn tourists
here since 1927, when the Furnace Creek Inn first opened. There's more
to Death Valley than the thermometer's bulb-busting acrobatics, however.
Stretching for about 110 miles along the California-Nevada border, Death
Valley's boundaries contain 11,000-foot peaks, alkali flats, pinyon woodlands,
rocky, narrow slot canyons, sand dunes, and an 8,000-foot- thick deposit
of sediment forming the valley floor. The sediments arrived here via streams
and rivers from much of the east side of the Sierra Nevada as well as
western Nevada. Some have been exposed by erosion to resemble the folds
and crevices of a massive multicolored mushroom. Death Valley lay beneath
a lake 600 feet deep during the Ice Age (the Pleistocene epoch). Today
the only water here sneaks in via hot springs working their way up through
the baking crust. Some small ponds host the rare desert pupfish, an evolutionary
marvel descended from a diminutive species trapped as the giant lake dried
up. Pupfish have adapted to super-salty water and temperatures as high
as 111 degrees Fahrenheit. In other a-reas, a strong flow is enough to
irrigate a golf course and the grounds of the famed Furnace Creek Inn
and nearby Furnace Creek Ranch. A National Monument from 1933 to 1994
and now a National Park, Death Valley slowly saw the profile of its human
visitors "evolve" as well from pioneers and miners, who saw
the area as nothing more than a source of borax, copper, gold, and other
plunder-worthy metals, to a gradually increasing stream of tourists from
around the world. Most arrive in winter, when glorious temperatures in
the 60s and 70s are conducive to exploring the park's many natural attractions.
The park does get visitors in summer, despite midday readings in the 120-plus
range. At those temperatures, however, you can only stand outside your
air-conditioned automobile or hotel room for a few minutes and gasp—like
a pupfish out of water.
Plan to spend at least two days seeing the park. Start with detailed information
regarding routes and safety precautions from DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK
VISITOR CENTER (Death Valley National Park, Death Valley, CA 92328; 760/786-2331).
Note that without advance reservations, campsites and lodgings can be
very difficult to procure during winter. The Death Valley area does have
a small store (at Furnace Creek Ranch) and four service stations (at Furnace
Creek Ranch, Stovepipe Wells, Scotty's Castle, and Beatty, Nevada).
Many of Death Valley's attractions are of the scenic-vista sort. SCOTTY'S
CASTLE, built in 1924 by Chicago tycoon Albert Johnson at a cost of $2.5
million and now administered by Grapevine Ranger Sta- tion (760/786-2313),
is a must-see. This Moorish mansion with its four
towers opens daily for tours of its rooms (the grounds are open for self
guided touring). The Valley's famed SAND DUNES are 8 miles east of Stovepipe
Wells via Highway 190. The oddest spot may well be Race- track Valley,
a mud flat 29 miles from the last paved road via a graded dirt road. Pushed
by howling winds, rocks (some too large for a man to lift) move across
the surface when it's been made slick by rain or ice, leaving long, mysterious
tracks. Then the surface bakes dry again, and visitors arrive to scratch
their heads and wonder.
WHERE DID ALL THE LAKES GO ?
Coyote, Leech, Lost, Owl, Cuddleback, Searles, Cronese,
Soda, Broadwell, Cadiz -- the list goes on and on. All were lakes.
Now all are broad, shimmering white flats of the utmost aridity
-- seemingly the California desert at its driest. Could there
really have been water here?
There certainly was, sometimesto a depth of several
hundred feet. Look closely at the hills and mountainsidessurrounding
many of the High Desert's dry lake beds and you'll see phantom
"wave terraces" the telltale shoreline of the ancient
lake at its fullest. Most of these lakes filled toward the end
of the Pleistocene epoch, a time when the ice cap had crept south
well into what is now United States. As the ice began to recede,
melting waters drained southward across Nevada and Eastern California,
pouring into the Salton Trough and the Gulf of California.
Searles Dry Lake off Highway 178 ( 20 miles east
of Ridgecrest) is one of the most interesting of these phantoms,
for here the Trona Pinnacles (now protected as Pinnacles National
Natural Landmark) rise from the flats likemisshapen "drip
style" sand castles. Each Pinnacle was formed between 10,000
and 100,000 years ago when underwater hot springs deposited calcium-rich
groundwater into a lake of carbonate brine. The resulting columnar
blobs of tufa (cemented in part by colonies of blue-green algae)
grew to heights of 100 feet or more. When the water receded ,
the rocklike spires remained. A half mile trail takes you through
some of the most interesting formations.
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