3). (2000). (1990) along the west side of the range, but the dip of this fault is not known. c. Includes (from top to base) Smoky, Halfpint, and Dunderberg Shale members. The scale of this core complex, 3040 km wide by 60 km long with an amplitude of 4 km, is larger than other well-known core complexes like the Snake Range and Whipple core complexes (Block and Royden, 1990). They also lie on the flank of a Proterozoic rift basin filled with Pahrump Group sediments, as mapped by Wright et al. Extrapolating this age to the 4.7 km maximum depth in the Badwater Basin (Blakely and Ponce, 2002) yields an age of 4.85.3 Ma for the base of the section. The age of fill in Death Valley is not directly observed. Ordovician The hottest temperature ever officially recorded was in Death Valley at 134F, or 56.7C. Although the mines themselves were worked intermittently until about 1900, there is no clear evidence that the charcoal kilns were operational after 1879. *2 Members* light-colored, cliff forming quarzite -Emigrant Pass Member and Resting Spring Member nearshore and foreshore deposits containing ichnofossils (e.g. Lake Manly once covered the valley to a depth of 30 feet (9.1m). The structures are usually corrugated with mullion structures parallel to spreading direction and Tucholke and Lin (1998) relate them to continental metamorphic core complexes. The main visitor center of the park is located here as well as the Oasis at Death Valley resort complex. See Table 1 for data and explanations of abbreviations used. At Mosaic Canyon, for instance, where the detachment surface is exposed (TD, Fig. As summarized in Figure 6, interpretations of the extensional structures at Tucki Mountain show that the footwall of the detachment surface consists of Proterozoic basement and metasediments. (2005). 4) contains some useful timing information. From the left, the columns show the igneous events, stratigraphy, tectonic events, and regional tectonic regime. Vertebrates, titanotheres, etc. The second phase was the development of Death Valley as a pull-apart basin, with higher-angle faults and transtensional motion. Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley - DesertUSA Also shown are the three Quaternary pluvial Lake Manly events when Death Valley was flooded (Anderson and Wells, 2003). The Basin and Range extensional detachment tracks over the top of the range, with extensional allochthons perched on the eastern flanks of the range. Adding another day to your visit to Death Valley helps to balance out the long drive to and from Las Vegas. Like the Bonanza King, alternating light- and dark-gray beds for distinctive color bands, but bands are thicker and more prominent. Quartz grains are usually fine- to medium-grained. A 20 m thick white quartzite marks the base of the unit in the Specter Range and northwestern Spring Mountains. Fault dips along the southwest flanks of the turtlebacks are steep, e.g., 50 at Badwater as shown in Figure 9. Far below the surface, high pressure and temperature altered the dolomite into the metamorphic rock, marble. This fuel was then transported to mines in The Argus Range, 25 miles to the west, to feed smelting and ore extraction operations. Death Valley National Park Photos (2,214) Directions Print/PDF map Length 3.4 miElevation gain 964 ftRoute type Out & back Check out this 3.4-mile out-and-back trail near Death Valley, California. The concept illustrated here is that faulting due to strike slip broke and separated the original Basin and Range detachment surface. Wowzers. This multiphase history of the structures plus their location along a preexisting rift may explain why the turtlebacks are unique features of the western North America extensional province. The Major Geologic Events of Death Valley - GSOC The dip on the eastern side of the basin is 50. camel, horse, bird, carnivore). The Bat Mountain Formation is an interlayered conglomerate and sandstone section found at the east end of the Funeral Mountains (Fig. Generally classified as a quartz monzonite porphyry but in the area of Skidoo, it is mostly gneissic but in part porphyritic and has fluidal structures with dark phenocrysts of biotite. Death Valley is located in three partly overlapping structural provinces (Fig. Interpretations of tectonic settings in Figure 3 come from Snow and Lux (1999) for formations in the Cottonwood Mountains (Tub, Tpn, Tnv), from Knott et al. Mosaic Canyon - Death Valley National Park (U.S. National Park Service) (2009), in a detailed analysis of the Inyo Mountains, report a phase of normal faulting starting at 15.6 Ma and initiation of strike-slip faulting on the Hunter Mountain fault at 2.8 Ma. Basement geometry below Death Valley shows a steep-sided basin nearly 5000 m deep. Also in the last few years, several important data sets relevant to a regional understanding of the geology of the Death Valley area have become available. Contains basalt, alluvial and lacustrine deposits and vertebrate trace fossils in the lacustrine strata (e.g. 2; Hodges et al., 1987; Wernicke et al., 1988b). Along the western side of Tucki Mountain, rocks in the hanging wall of the detachment are MiocenePliocene sediments and volcanics of the Nova Basin (Tn in Fig. Death Valley is a pull-apart basin, as originally proposed by Burchfiel and Stewart (1966), formed in the last 3 m.y. Detachment faults (italicized): TDTucki Detachment; EFEmigrant Detachment; HFHarrisburg fault; HCHanaupah Detachment. 48 Hours in Death Valley National Park - bemytravelmuse.com It is a showcase of geologic features as well as a beautiful example of one of Death Valley's many canyons. To accommodate as many events as possible, the time scale (from Gradstein et al., 2004) is shown with a variable vertical scale, logarithmic from 1000 yr to 1 m.y., then a linear scale from 1 to 5 m.y. Golden Canyon (Death Valley National Park) - All You Need to Know The canyon offers a suite of folds on almost all scales and styles to bedazzle the geologically-inclined visitor. Eocene and Paleocene Miocene Maximum thickness about 2,000 feet. They were then cut by strike-slip faults, forming the flanks of the Death Valley pull-apart basin. Racetrack stones only move once every two or three years and most tracks last for just three or four years. 2 Playa Salt Deposits 2; Cemen et al., 1999). The cross section was made by extracting topography from the DEM data (Fig. Dark-brown to orange burrow mottling is prevalent, and several layers have dark-brown weathering chert beds and nodules. Near the end of this extensional phase and lasting until ca. The first restoration at 3 Ma removes the graben formed as a result of pull-apart basin formation; strike slip, which would be perpendicular to the page (Topping, 1993), is not incorporated. 31 Bonanza King Formation 23 Tin Mountain Limestone These rocks are found along the full length of the Panamint Range (Fig. With an elevation several feet above the valley floor at Badwater, the Devil's Golf Course remains dry, allowing weathering processes to sculpt the salt there into complicated formations. 3 Ma, deposition of a thick sequence of volcanics, clastics, and some lacustrine carbonates signaled a period of relative tectonic quiescence, with sediments in some areas covering the exhumed detachment surfaces. Racetrack Playa is a seasonally dry lake (playa) located in the northern part of the Panamint Mountains that is famous for rocks that mysteriously move across its surface. Early + Middle Pleistocene American Scientist. (1976). The area covered ranges from Kingston Peak to the southeast of Death Valley, northeast to the Southwest Nevada Volcanic Field (SWNVF), and as far west as the Darwin Plateau on the west side of Panamint Valley. This means that the structures are young, created in the last 3 m.y., although the rocks that make up the turtleback megamullions formed the footwall to the Basin and Range extensional system and were tectonically exhumed in the Miocene. This surface tracks over the top of the Panamint Range, with extensional allochthons consisting of an Early Paleozoic section perched on the eastern flank of the range. 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. Running water scoured away at the fault-weakened rock, gradually carving Mosaic canyon. Periodic flash floods carry rocky debris (sediment) eroded from Mosaic Canyon and the surrounding hillsides toward the valley below. The largest dune is called Star Dune and is relatively stable and stationary because it is at a point where the various winds that shape the dunes converge. Holocene - Pleistocene Half-day Tours. I've only ever hiked it in January and December, and even then it felt warm. In the first phase, up to 8 km of uplift of the White Mountains (WM, Fig. No fossils. In this formation, the placoderm Dunkleosteus (a small cladodont) and cochliodont tooth have been found. The petroglyphs here are made possible because many of the rocks in these arid conditions have desert varnish on them. Difficulty: Easy/Moderate. Each newly formed lake doesn't last long though, because the 1.9 inches (48mm) average rainfall is overwhelmed by a 150-inch (3,800mm) annual evaporation rate. This older faulting is interpreted as the final phase of Basin and Range extension in the area (Louie et al., 1992; Calzia and Rm, 2000). This dolomite has been correlated to the Noonday Dolomite (Hunt and Mabey, 1966; Williams et al., 1976), which is also found in the footwall of the Black Mountains detachment fault at Copper Canyon and Mormon Point (Williams et al., 1976), although Miller and Pavlis (2005) question details of this correlation. Scarce fossils. Ubehebe Crater is the largest of more than a dozen of in the Ubehebe Craters field. The crust responds to this force by sending a large and long roughly v-shaped block of crust down which forms the bedrock of the valley floor (see Basin and Range). The Noonday Dolomite ( Fig. This formation contains one of the best stratigraphically documented trilobite faunas in North America. Several thin limestone layers near the top of the formation at Quartz Spring are fossiliferous. There is no apparent reason for these rocks to be in the footwall of the detachment at Tucki Mountain and in the hanging wall further south along the range, as they would need to be if the entire Panamint Range is allochthonous. Bedding dips are from Hunt and Mabey (1966). Upper and lower third of units consists of interbedded red and brown quartzite, brownish green micaceous siltstone and minor orange-weathering silty dolomite. The scarce springs and surrounding lush oases support thriving plant communities and attract a wide variety of animals. *2 Members* cemented fan gravel exposed at: Furnace Creek, Artist Drive, Mormon Point, and Emigrant Wash. No fossils found. These megamullions are similar to those seen at oceanic spreading centers. Other fossils: foraminifera, coelenterates, solitary/colonial corals, bryozoan, goniatite and orthceroid cephalopods, gastropods, pelecypods, crinoid stems, brachiopods, phillipsid trilobites, an annelid worm, and petrified wood. 1) developed and has forced deformation to the east, into the ECSZ. The cross section of Figure 9 with, superimposed at Badwater, a generalized cross section across an oceanic megamullion structure (megamullion data from Tucholke and Lin, 1998). The turtlebacks are megamullions very similar to megamullions adjacent to seafloor spreading centers. Un road trip en van dans l'ouest des tats-Unis, un city trip New York City ou Chicago, des randonnes dans les montagnes rocheuses du Colorado. 4). This eastward propagation is likely to continue with the Pacific-North America plate boundary ultimately moving to the ECSZ, with motion on the San Andreas fault ceasing (Faulds et al., 2005). 4) commenced prior to intrusion of the 10.6 Ma Little Chief stock, which was intruded to 3 km below the contemporary surface. At some locations, such as in the Spring Mountains, has sandy carbonate beds and collophane nodules, and in Panamint Range area, lower part contains mostly silty and sandy dolomite, argillaceous quarzite, and minor shale. The younger age is further confirmed by occurrence of one of the Mesquite Spring tuffs (3.13.35 Ma; numbers 7 and 8 in Fig. Visitors can hike on trails to the bottom or around the rim. Further justification for the detachment geometry shown in Figure 7 comes from the southwestern flanks of the Panamint Range. (2002), in this case supplemented from the map of Hunt and Mabey (1966). Purple polygons (Prot bsmnt) are exposures of Proterozoic basement, generally denoting detachment footwalls, from Workman et al. Wright et al. Uplift history of the range is uncertain with present data. per group (up to 4) Small Group Guide Tour: Death Valley Day Tour with Sunset and stars Viewing. 21 Rest Spring Shale Most of this formation (lower 2/3 to ) is cliff-forming, medium-dark-gray, burrow-mottled, irregularly thin-to-thick-bedded dolomite with common planar laminations; includes nodules and lenses of dark-grey to dark-brown chert. Dokka and Travis (1990b) favored an initiation age of 106 Ma for the Mojave portion of the ECSZ. This correlation implies 2555 km of post-eruption offset between the two locations, the distance depending on details of how the intervening faults are restored (McKenna and Hodges, 1990). Location Fall Canyon is located in the Grapevine Mountains, towards the less-traveled north end of Death Valley National Park.It is close to Titus Canyon, another colorful ravine that is popular because of the rough one-way track that extends through it - this is a 4WD route that starts from road NV 374 in Nevada, crosses the flat Amargosa Valley into California and then winds through the . Tucki Mountain at the north end of the range (Fig. In the first stage, lasting from ca. Late Miocene (12 Ma), 8 Copper Canyon Formation This trail is more about the journey than the destination, so keep your eyes open and enjoy the beauty as you walk. c. Banded Mountain and Papoose Lake members recognizable in most parts of the map area. Unit is 30 to 350 m thick in the NTS area, 70 m thick in the Montgomery Mountains, 106 m thick in the Dry Mountain area, Cottonwood Mountains. These sediments are important recorders of tectonic development of Death Valley, but their chronostratigraphy was poorly known in 1966 because of the mostly endemic fauna in these deposits and limited radiometric age control. This canyon was formed through a process of cut and fill which included periodic erosive floods followed by long periods of deposition and uplift. They are in fault contact with the Copper Canyon turtleback (Drewes, 1963; Holm et al., 1994). The Artist Drive Formation is in fault contact with Proterozoic gneiss and Miocene intrusives of the Badwater turtleback structure. Dave Reynolds, Larry Lawver, and especially an anonymous reviewer provided excellent suggestions for improving the manuscript. Rainbow Canyon is a canyon near the western edge of the park. The Panamint Range has previously been interpreted as an extensional allochthon, with the entire range transported from on top of or east of the Black Mountains. Devonian Places of interest in the Death Valley area are mostly located within Death Valley National Park in eastern California. The Panamint Valley basin runs between the Panamint Range to the east and Argus and Slate ranges to the west for 65 miles (105km). CA Difficulty: Moderate to Difficult Elevation Gain: 1,200 ft (366m) (1976) and McAllister (1976). The dolomite was later deeply buried by younger sediment. The Wildrose Charcoal Kilns were completed in 1877 by the Modock Consolidated Mining Company, above Death Valley in the Panamint Range, and were used to reduce pinyon and juniper tree wood to charcoal in a process of slow burning in low oxygen. No fossils. 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. The pull-apart concept has also been applied to the Panamint Valley, the basin on the west side of the Panamint Range, which links via the Hunter Mountain strike-slip fault northwards into Saline Valley (Burchfiel et al., 1987; Lee et al., 2009). The depositional base of the oldest of these northern Black Mountains formations, the Artist Drive, is not seen. Exposed in Butte Valley 1 mile south of this area; 8,000 feet of metasediments and volcanics. (1999) relate this fault system to the pull-apart fault system that Burchfiel and Stewart (1966) postulated in their model for formation of Death Valley. Between the Last Chance Range and Saline Mountains is the graben Eureka Valley. Examination of structural, stratigraphic, and timing relationships in the region suggests that this interpretation needs revision. a. Cemen et al. 5 Funeral Formation Rocks now in the crest of the range were metamorphosed to greenschist facies, representing 10 km burial, in the Jurassic, with retrograde metamorphism associated with granitic intrusions in the Cretaceous (Labotka and Albee, 1990). It lies underneath the extensional allochthons on the east side of the range, surfacing along the west side of these allochthons in the east-dipping Harrisburg fault zone mapped by Hodges et al. At Lake Hill, the lower unit contains the cephalopod Armenoceras and several species of the brachiopod Lepidocyclus. The Noonday Dolomite has since been tilted from uplift. Although the cross section in Figure 9 shows a simple graben structure, the three-dimensional basement structure of Death Valley is complex. Light-to moderate-brown, dusky-yllowish brown, varicolored red, and white to light-brown quartzite and sandstone; sand grains are fine to medium-grained. Thickness of Cenozoic sediments from the digital compilation of Blakely and Ponce (2002) in color. By night, it's otherworldly. In just a few million years, during Late Miocene to Pliocene time, older rocks were intensely faulted and sheared. All these formations were deposited in basins formed by Basin and Range low-angle extension; in the model presented here, the floor of these basins was in some areas the exhumed Basin and Range detachment surface. (2009) suggest that the later event at 2.8 Ma dates onset of strike-slip faulting along the Hunter Mountain fault zone and initiation of strike slip in this portion of the ECSZ. Trilobites, orthid brachiopods, the mollusk Ctenodonta, and conodonts have also been reported from this unit. Foraminifera and crinoid columns have also been reported from this formation. The middle member is characterized by the brachiopods Cyrtospirifer, and Stringocephalus, the stromatoporoids Amphipora and Stromatopora, and cladoporoid corals. Mostly thick-bedded arid massive dark-colored dolomite, thin-bedded limestone member 500 feet thick 1 000 feet below top of formation, 2 brown-weathering shaIy units, upper one fossiliferous, about 200 arid 500 feet, respectively, below thin-bedded member. It overlies Mississippian carbonates and has not been directly dated. Fall Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California During periods of heavy rain, water washes down from nearby mountain slopes onto the playa, forming a shallow, short-lived lake. Another part of salt creek runs with brackish water year-round. 19 Keeler Canyon Formation Located 1/4 mile west of Stovepipe Wells Village, the 2-mile gravel access road climbs 1000 ft. to the parking area. Upper 20 to 25 m consists of slope-forming, light-olive-gray to light-grey weathering, aphanic to finely crystalline dolomite with sparse pelmatozoan fragments; contains zones of yellow-ish-gray silty dolomite; beds are locally ookitic and contain oncoids. Fundulus and Cyprinodon osteichthyes fish and a number of turtle scutes and rodent teeth and skull have been found. This paper established a robust stratigraphy, including detailed relative stratigraphy of Neogene sediments. In this paper, I suggest that Death Valley also formed in two phases, with low-angle Basin and Rangestyle extension in the Miocene followed by pull-apart basin development during strike-slip deformation in the last three million years. Lower contact with Eurkeka Quartzite is major disconformity; upper contact with Laketown Dolomite (Silurian) in eastern park of quadrangle is disconformable, in western part of quadrangle, upper contact with Hidden Valley Dolomite reported as gradational and conformable. One of the data points used in structural restorations comes from a thrust complex, preserved in one of the Basin and Range allochthons in the northern Panamint Range, which correlates with a thrust complex of similar geometry in the Nopah Range (Snow and Wernicke, 2000). From 1.8 billion-year-old metamorphic rocks exposed in the Black mountains, to recent playa sediments deposited in the valley basins, Death Valley possesses a superb geologic record. Please keep in mind that collecting rocks within Death Valley is illegal without a permit! Titus Canyon is a narrow gorge in the Grapevine Mountains near the eastern boundary of Death Valley National Park. The main extensional detachment surface is gently folded into the arched topographic surface of Tucki Mountain (Wernicke et al., 1988b). It features megabreccia and other rock formations, petroglyphs, and wildlife of various kinds, including bighorn sheep. b. Limestone beds contain ooids, oncoids, and are stromatolitic. The Panamint Range is more symmetric, with perhaps a slightly steeper western flank. Papoose Lake Member is mostly dark-gray dolomite with distinctive brownish-gray to grayish-orange burrow mottles; sparse limestone and silty dolomite beds. It has a width of about 10 miles (16km). Cross section across the Panamint Range and Black Mountains, profile C in previous location maps. Early Holocene Formed of steep cliffs, it is composed of red colored oxidized rocks and is visible from Zabriskie point and the Golden Canyon trail. 30 Racetrack Dolomite This desert butte was once an island in a lake that filled Death Valley several times during the Pleistocene ice ages. Those missing 20 formations have not yet been added to our Stratigraphy Collection. These volcanics correlate across Death Valley with the Rhodes Tuff and Sheepshead Andesite in the southern Black Mountains (TC+RT, Fig. Beds contain tabuliar-planar and trough cross bed sets, and Skolithus burrows. This particular form of desert varnish takes It should be noted that 3 formations have been given unofficial names: Warm Spring Granite, Skidoo Granite, and Strozzis Ranch Rhyolite. Some of these have been expanded or even merged by sandblasting. 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 basin is the second lowest depression in the Western Hemisphere, eclipsed only by Laguna del Carbn in Argentina at 344 feet (105m). Telescope Peak can also be seen from here which is 11,331 feet (3,454m) above sea level. Hells Gate is a point of interest located in Death Valley National Park, at the intersection of Daylight Pass Road and Beatty Road. 7) is a platformal carbonate deposited unconformably across a Neoproterozoic rift basin that marks the onset of Proterozoic through Paleozoic miogeoclinal deposits of the western North American passive margin ( Wright et al., 1978 ). a. Unit is from 6 to 150 m thick. Reviews. The ghost town of Ballarat had 400 residents at the turn of the 20th century when mines were active in the area. Total Driving Time To/From Las Vegas: 4.5 hours. Pennsylvanian *3 Members* upper and lower members are brownish-weathering dolomite/limestone and quartzite in the middle member lower member represents high water stand deposition with carbonate intervals overlain by fluvially-dominated terrestrial braidplain and braid-delta facies of the middle member also contains Ediacaran fossils upper member represents mainly marine deposition with abundant body and trace fossils typical of the Early Cambrian such as olenellid trilobites and Skolithos tubes found in the siltstone beds, also Helicoplacoid echinoderms and brachiopod molds and casts have been found above the archaeocyathan and olenellid-bearing limestones are green siltstones containing trilobites, echinoderms, and hyoliths. These low hills are composed of clastic sediments of the Confidence Hills Formation (Wright and Troxel, 1984), with an age range of 1.72.2 Ma (Knott et al., 2005).