Everyone knows that the higher you go the colder it gets, but we may forget that the reverse also applies. Death Valley is the bed of a lake that dried up over 2,000 years ago and it is up to 86 metres (282 feet)  below sea level. It gets very hot, indeed a 1913 Death Valley temperature of 56.7 degrees centigrade (134 fahrenheit) remains the second highest ever recorded. 1849 prospectors named it Death Valley after suffering  great hardship and losing nearly half of their numbers. It’s easy to see the valley now by air conditioned car, but make sure that you have plenty of water with you.

Death Valley National Park

The Devil's Golf Course

The Devil’s Golf course is made up of lumps of silt and salt left by the lake when it finally evaporated. Moisture remains underground and this is gradually drawn to the surface where it evaporates leaving these salty pinnacles.  Nothing grows here, or on the mountains in the background which have no soil and hence the rock strata are clearly visible.

Zabriskie Point

Just outside of the main valley can be found a strange, almost lunar, landscape. Zabriskie Point is an area of badlands similar to those in North & South Dakota, but on a much smaller scale.  The land here is made of mud which rain erodes to an ever changing series of peaks and gullies. In the background loom the mountains on the far side of Death Valley. The mountains are clearly visible on this cool January day, but when the temperatures soar in the summer they can be obscured  by a heat haze.

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Keane Wonder Mine

In December 1903 Jack Keane and Domingo Etcharren discovered gold while prospecting on the slopes of the Funeral range. Irishman Keane had been prospecting without success for 8 years, so he named his find the ‘Wonder Mine’. Initial attempts to develop the mine were a failure. Keane and Etcharren sold bonds giving right to develop the mine and later to purchase it, but two bondholders each failed to purchase the mine. Then John Campbell bought the mine only to see his fortune wiped out by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Homer Wilson bought the mine in June 1906 and he developed the stamp mill in the foreground of the picture and the gravity operated aerial tramway  visible above the mill  which linked mine and mill. The mine was plagued by problems caused by the heat and it closed in 1912. It was reopened between 1914 and 1916, after that there were several unsuccessful attempts to reopen it. Over its life the mine yielded gold worth around $1.1m.

Beehive Charcoal Kilns

The Death Valley National Park is over 1.3 million hectares (3.3 million acres) in size and there is much more to it than the hot and arid valley bottom.  Some parts of the National Park can be relatively cold and wet, as demonstrated by the snow and trees in this this picture taken at the much higher altitude of Wildrose Canyon. Here in 1877 the Modock Consolidated Mining Company built 10 charcoal kilns to turn the pinyon pine  trees into charcoal to fuel two silver-lead smelters about 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the west. The kilns were abandoned when the smelters closed down in the summer of 1878.

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Vintage car at Scotty's Castle

The story of Death Valley Scotty is fascinating. Born Walter Scott in 1872 as a boy he ran away from his Kentucky home to join his brother in Nevada. He spent 12 years travelling the world with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. However, his obsession was his Death Valley Gold Mine. He persuaded wealthy Chicago insurance magnate Albert Johnson to invest in it. Johnson made several trips to Death Valley to check on the (lack of) progress with the mine. He never saw the mine but he found that the climate agreed with him, so in the late 1920s he built a ranch to provide comfortable accommodation. However, Scotty liked to tell everyone that he owned the ranch and ,just like his mine, they believed the story, hence Scotty’s Castle.

The Harmony Borax Works & 20 Mule Team

Borax was discovered in the valley in 1881 and in 1882 the Harmony Borax Works was  set up. The heat in Death Valley proved to be a major problem. Borax is extracted by dissolving ‘Cottonball’ ore in boiling water then Borax crystals form as the liquid cools. However the summer temperatures in the valley proved to be too high for the crystals to form. Transport was also a major problem as the Borax had to be taken 265 kilometres (165 miles) to the nearest rail head. The 20 Mule Teams that hauled two large wagons full of Borax plus a water tank are now part of Californian legend. The Borax Works operated only until 1889.

Badwater

Death Valley isn’t the driest place in the world, indeed having virtually no vegetation it is prone to flash floods. It should be no surprise then that there is some water to be found in the lowest parts of the valley. Having no outlet the water is extremely salty, hence the name ‘Badwater’. Despite the high salt content there is life to be found in the water including a tiny fish called the Death Valley Pupfish. Depending on recent amounts of rain, the size of Badwater varies from a large but shallow lake to a small pool, but it never completely dries out.

© Mike  Elsden 1981 - 2025

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