b. Cemented gravel; mostly stream deposits; 3,000 feet thick. Total Driving Time To/From Las Vegas: 4.5 hours. Airspace above the valley is part of the Panamint Military Operating Area, restricted to US military use. Detachment fault surfaces are exposed in several places in the Death Valley region, with the best studied being the antiformal structures known as turtlebacks in the Black Mountains on the east side of the valley (Figs. In the second 3 Ma restoration, the topography that formed as a result of young transtensional strike slip is removed. Sand dunes cover 3 square miles (8km2) of Eureka Valley, rising 680 feet (207 m) as one of North America's tallest dunes. Titus Canyon is a narrow gorge in the Grapevine Mountains near the eastern boundary of Death Valley National Park. (2002). b. Faults are from the USGS Quaternary faults database (2009). Structural inferences from younger formations include: (1) two correlated outcrops of the Greenwater Formation in the Natural Bridge area are separated by a normal fault with 2000 m of throw (Greene, 1997); (2) conglomerates in the lower Furnace Creek Formation include granite boulders derived from the northwest, possibly Hunter Mountain (Hunt and Mabey, 1966; Wright et al., 1999), suggesting that the Death Valley basin did not yet exist at 5 Ma; (3) fan-deltas in the upper part of the Funeral Formation are offset 8 km by dextral strike slip along the Furnace Creek fault zone, implying this much strike slip in the last 2 m.y. The best Death Valley National Park things to do, from the dunes and Artist's Palette to the Badwater Basin. The Noonday Dolomite (Fig. [13][14][15][16] National Park Service rangers will sometimes remove a number of teakettles when there are too many. The Black Mountains display an asymmetric east-tilted geometry that is typical of a rift-flank uplift (Watts, 2001). The Hunter Mountain fault connects to strike-slip faults on the west side of the Panamint Range; Burchfiel et al. Neogene sediments preserved within Death Valley record the latest phases of structural evolution of the basin. 4) commenced prior to intrusion of the 10.6 Ma Little Chief stock, which was intruded to 3 km below the contemporary surface. The Amargosa Chaos is a series of geological formations located in the Black Mountains in southern Death Valley. Due to their easy access from the road and the overall proximity of Death Valley to Hollywood, these dunes have been used to film sand dune scenes for several movies including films in the Star Wars series. Middle (?) 17 Butte Valley Formation Similar rock travel patterns have been recorded in several other playas in the region but the number and length of travel grooves on The Racetrack are notable. At Lake Hill, the lower unit contains the cephalopod Armenoceras and several species of the brachiopod Lepidocyclus. The primary source of the dune sands is probably the Cottonwood Mountains which lie to the north and northwest. Dates. 28 Pogonip Group A lithologic correlation with a similar conglomerate-sandstone succession at Tucki Mountain has also been used to constrain both the age and amount of extension along the Furnace Creek fault zone (Wernicke et al., 1988b). The salt in the Devil's Golf Course consists of the minerals that were dissolved in the lake's water and left behind in the Badwater Basin when the lake evaporated. a. The structures are usually corrugated with mullion structures parallel to spreading direction and Tucholke and Lin (1998) relate them to continental metamorphic core complexes. Neogene tectonic activity reported by Lee et al. Half-day Tours. Controversy surrounds the use of Furnace Creek water to support the resort (complete with a swimming pool) and nearby facilities, including a golf course. The entrance to Mosaic Canyon appears deceptively ordinary, but just a .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}14 mile (400m) walk up the canyon narrows dramatically to a deep slot cut into the face of Tucki Mountain. Rocks in the footwall of the detachment are Late Proterozoic Pahrump Group and Johnnie Formation. a. c. Widely exposed in map area. It is an endorheic basin that can form a lake after heavy rain. The three turtleback structures in the Black Mountains, as pointed out by Miller and Pavlis (2005), are keys to understanding tectonic evolution of the area. Toward the end of this episode of tectonic denudation, deposition of the predominantly volcanic Artist Drive Formation began. Tectonostratigraphic chart for the Death Valley area. This formation is composed of angular fragments of many different kinds of parent rock, and it can be seen on the floor of the canyon just south of the parking area. Over time, the sediments compressed into limestone and a related calcium-magnesium carbonate called dolomite. Data from Smith and Sandwell (1997). Wowzers. No fossils. (2005). By far the largest national park in the contiguous United States, more than 90% of Death Valley's 3.3 million acres are protected as a designated Wilderness Area. I would like to thank Dave Reynolds and Stefan Boettcher for introducing me to Death Valley geology. The highest strandline is one of the principal clues that geologists use to estimate the depth of the lake that once filled Death Valley. From these data, Hunt and Mabey (1966) assume that about a third of the fill [of Death Valley] is Quaternary and that the rest is Tertiary (Hunt and Mabey, 1966, p. A72). Generally considered a moderately challenging route, it takes an average of 1 h 59 min to complete. camel, horse, bird, carnivore). per adult. McKenna and Hodges (1990) use the name Eastern Panamint fault system for a series of faults that include a basal detachment and higher faults that collectively form an extensional duplex. Death Valley Hiking & Camping | REI Co-op Early Holocene Artist's Drive rises up to the top of an alluvial fan fed by a deep canyon cut into the Black Mountains. As mentioned above in the discussion on Tucki Mountain, the west side of Tucki Mountain is today a low-angle fault. Fall Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California