I must admit I had preconceptions of this place - hot, sandy, and filled with creatures that can kill you. But I thought it would be character building to face my fear of extreme heat and Tarantulas, so it was added to the route.
I'm so glad we did, its title is a total misnomer and belies the beauty and life found here. The largest national park south of Alaska (yep, that surprised me too!), Death Valley is a place of extremes being North America's driest spot (average annual rainfall is less than two inches), and also the hottest, in fact it has the World's highest ever recorded temperature of 134°F (a casual 56.7 degrees Centigrade). And yet, the park still receives nearly a million visitors each year.
(The view of Badwater Basin from Dante’s Peak)
The graben (the geological term for a sunken fragment of the Earth's crust) has richly coloured mudstone hills and canyons, sand dunes, meadows, rolling grassy hills and a 200-square-mile salt flat surrounded by mountains. The desert is sometimes turned into a wildflower meadow with more than 1000 varieties of plants, brought on by spring rains.
(View of Artist's Palette at sunset, named for the rich rock colours)
The scenery is some of the most dramatic I've ever seen. Telescope Peak (the highest mountain in the park at 11,049-ft) lies only 15 miles from Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the U.S at 282ft below sea level. The vertical drop from the peak to the basin floor is twice the depth of the Grand Canyon.
And it's not just landscapes that astound. The valley is home to bobcats, foxes, bighorn sheep, burro, rodents, and many birds including hawks, oh and rattle snakes, scorpions and Tarantulas..within the Joshua Trees, juniper, pines, and wildflowers.
The Valley has had many inhabitants through the years. Native Americans, most recently the Timbisha Shoshone, found ways to adapt to these desert conditions, shown by the rock art and artifacts indicating a human presence dating back at least 9,000 years. In more recent years the valley has been home to mining prospectors and slaves; Chinese labourers; Basque immigrants in the early 1900s, and even Japanese Americans temporarily interned here during World War II. So where did the name come from? The story goes that in 1849 gold seekers bound for California struggled through the 120-mile long basin, enduring a two-month ordeal of "hunger and thirst and an awful silence." on reaching the end of the valley, one of the party looked back and said, "Good-bye, Death Valley." Since then, I was surprised to learn that Death Valley has experienced over 140 years of varied mining ventures, and you can still see the remnants dotted about the valley. In the 1880s to early 1900s the primitive technology, scarcity of water and fuel, and transportation difficulties led to many failures. However one success was the Harmony Borax Works. Active from 1883 to 1888, this mill produced partially refined borax, and was made famous by its use of Twenty Mule Team wagons for transport and in its advertising for the company’s Borax soap.
(The remains of the Harmony Borax Works)
Charcoal kilns, designed by Swiss engineers and built by Chinese workers in 1879, still sit up in the hills where they produced charcoal for the nearby mine smelters. They closed after only 3yrs of use,and this, combined with the dry conditions, has meant that the 25ft high and 30ft diameter structures are still incredibly well preserved (shown below).
The early 1900s brought gold and silver prospectors to the valley, and with them boom towns sprang up only to become ghost towns within the same decade. The mountains were searched for antimony, copper, lead, zinc, and tungsten, however even the prosperous large-scale metal mining was shortlived, ending around 1915. It wasn't until February 1933 that Death Valley was made a National Monument, temporarily closing the land to mining,only for Congressional action to re-open the land to mining in June of the same year.
Mining technology developed, enabling greater material movement and processing of lower grades of ore. And the valley changed. Open-pit mines for borax (some 400ft deep) and talc began to cut through the landscape, and they were now being run by internationally-owned mining corporations buying claims in any area they could. The public outcry that ensued led to greater protection not only here, but for all national park areas.
The 1976 Mining in the Parks Act closed Death Valley to the filing of new mining claims, banned open-pit mining and required the National Park Service to examine the validity of thousands of pre-1976 mining claims. Mining resumed on a limited basis in 1980 with stricter environmental standards.
(A modern day Borax Works that we saw on the way to the valley)
For over a decade the Billie Mine, an underground borax mine along the road to Dante’s View, was the only active mine in the park, and finally closed in 2005.
And so, what's the point of this piece, other than to wax lyrical about how wonderful this place is? It's this: throughout my three days here I camped in 117°F (unseasonably hot apparently) and I watched out for poisonous beasties, but the most dangerous thing of all, was the countless mines that have been abandoned, deserted once they were deemed to be of no worth, leaving vast areas of unsafe ground. So as much as it was interesting to learn about the history, the biggest message from this is, let's make sure as engineers that we always finish the job right!
