47 Fun Facts About Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park straddles the border between which two states?

California and Nevada. Nearly all of the park is in California, but one Nevada piece isn't joined to the rest at all: Devils Hole, 40 acres around a flooded cave inside a separate wildlife refuge.

Death Valley holds which trio of superlatives among US national parks?

Hottest, driest and lowest, yet after a rare wet winter the valley floor erupts in a 'superbloom', with swaths of wildflowers across ground that is usually bare.

Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America, lies how far below sea level?

282 feet. The name comes from a spring-fed pool beside the road, but the water isn't poisonous, just far too salty to drink, and snails and insects live in it happily.

Death Valley's 134 °F became the world heat record in 2012 after a 1922 reading from which country was struck off?

Libya. Its 136 °F reading at El Azizia stood for 90 years, until a World Meteorological Organization panel found that an untrained stand-in observer had probably misread the thermometer.

About how much rain falls on the floor of Death Valley in an average year?

About 2 inches, and some years the gauge catches none at all. What does fall often comes in bursts that send flash floods down the canyons and remodel the landscape.

Why is Death Valley so dry?

Mountain ranges wring the moisture out of Pacific air: each storm must climb range after range, dropping its rain and snow on the western slopes until little is left, an effect called a rain shadow.

What is the highest point in Death Valley National Park?

Telescope Peak stands more than two miles above the lowest ground in North America, which lies at its foot, one of the greatest vertical rises in the lower 48.

Which dunes are the tallest in California, rising about 680 feet above a remote valley floor?

Eureka Dunes, in the park's far north. When dry sand avalanches down the steepest face the dune 'sings', a deep hum that has been compared to a distant propeller plane.

The lost wagon party of 1849 entered Death Valley looking for what?

A shortcut to the California gold fields. Only one man died there, but as the survivors climbed out someone is said to have called 'Goodbye, Death Valley', and the name stuck.

Which people regained about 7,500 acres of their Death Valley homeland under a 2000 act?

The Timbisha, a Shoshone people, had lived in the valley for centuries, yet the tribe won federal recognition only in the 1980s and had no land base in its homeland until the 2000 act.

The famous 'twenty-mule teams' that hauled Death Valley borax were really 18 mules and two what?

Horses. The two big 'wheelers' hitched nearest the wagons had the brute strength to start the heavy load rolling, and the eighteen mules ahead of them did the rest.

Which actor hosted the western series Death Valley Days in the mid-1960s, his last acting job?

Ronald Reagan. The borax-sponsored series was his final work as an actor: he left it in 1966 to run for governor of California, and won.

Which president proclaimed Death Valley a national monument in February 1933, weeks before leaving office?

Herbert Hoover. His proclamation closed the land to new mining claims, but only briefly: Congress reopened the monument to prospectors that June.

Which 1994 law expanded Death Valley National Monument and made it a national park?

The California Desert Protection Act added 1.3 million acres to the old monument, and the same law turned Joshua Tree into a national park and created Mojave National Preserve.

About what share of Death Valley National Park is designated wilderness?

About 90 percent: over 93% of the park is roadless wilderness, where the law bars cars, motorcycles and even bicycles, so most of Death Valley is open only to travel on foot or horseback.

Scotty's Castle in Grapevine Canyon was actually built and paid for by whom?

Chicago millionaire Albert Mussey Johnson built it as a holiday retreat. Walter Scott had conned him into backing a bogus gold mine, yet the two became friends and Johnson let 'Scotty' call the castle his own.

Why was Scotty's Castle closed to the public from 2015 onward?

Severe flood damage, then a 2021 fire: a storm stalled over Grapevine Canyon in October 2015 and buried the grounds in mud, and the fire then destroyed the historic garage that served as the visitor center.

The Racetrack Playa is famous for what?

Rocks that leave trails as they slide across it. In 2014 researchers finally caught them moving: thin sheets of ice on a shallow winter pond break up and, pushed by light winds, shove the stones along.

What created Ubehebe Crater in northern Death Valley?

A steam explosion when magma met groundwater: the blast hurled out shattered rock, and its dark debris still mantles the ground around the half-mile-wide crater.

The Badwater 135 ultramarathon starts in Death Valley and finishes at the trailhead to which mountain?

Mount Whitney: the course runs from the lowest point in North America to the foot of the highest peak in the lower 48, and it is staged in July, when the valley is at its hottest.

Michelangelo Antonioni's 1970 film is named after which Death Valley landmark?

Zabriskie Point. Antonioni shot scenes among the badlands at the viewpoint, and years later U2 came to the same spot to photograph the cover of The Joshua Tree.

George Lucas filmed parts of the original Star Wars in Death Valley as which desert planet?

Tatooine. Tunisia provided the main sets for Luke Skywalker's home planet, but Death Valley supplied extra scenes for the 1977 film, and the crew came back for Return of the Jedi.

Which president added Devils Hole, home of a rare pupfish, to Death Valley National Monument in 1952?

Harry Truman added the flooded cavern in 1952. It opens onto a vast aquifer, and big earthquakes as far away as Japan and Chile set its water sloshing like a bathtub.

What did the Supreme Court's Cappaert ruling establish about Devils Hole?

Its 1952 protection implicitly reserved its groundwater: a nearby ranch's wells were dropping the pool below the rock shelf where the pupfish feed and spawn, so the 1976 ruling capped the pumping.

The Death Valley pupfish, a relic of wetter times, descends from fish that swam in from which river?

The Colorado: its fish are thought to have reached the valley through a chain of Ice Age rivers and lakes, and when those dried up the survivors were left stranded in a few desert creeks and marshes.

What name do geologists give the Ice Age body of water that once filled Death Valley?

Lake Manly, named for a forty-niner who rescued his stranded party, was once hundreds of feet deep. After the storms of 2023-24 a shallow version came back for a few months, deep enough to kayak on.

About how large is the biggest salt pan in Death Valley National Park?

About 200 square miles of the valley floor. The crust is mostly ordinary table salt, left behind when the Ice Age lake that once filled the valley evaporated.

Which Death Valley dune field, just east of Stovepipe Wells, is the easiest to reach by paved road?

Mesquite Flat's dunes sit right beside the highway, with a car park at their edge. That easy access drew film crews too: dune scenes for the Star Wars series were shot there.

Which gold-rush ghost town near Death Valley had a stock exchange, opera house and bottle house by 1907?

Rhyolite boomed from 1905 with a three-storey bank and a house built of some 50,000 beer and liquor bottles, but its big mine shut in 1911 and within a few years the town was all but deserted.

Which cult leader was arrested in 1969 at Barker Ranch, a remote hideout now inside Death Valley National Park?

Charles Manson was found hiding under a bathroom sink. The officers had come about a burned earthmover belonging to the monument and had no idea yet that they had caught a murder suspect.

Which mining camp in Death Valley's Titus Canyon boomed in 1926 and was abandoned within a year?

Leadfield: its lead ore is said to have run out almost at once, the miners drifted away, and only a few shacks and mine openings are left.

What did the CCC camp at Cow Creek briefly hold in 1942?

Sixty-six detainees were held there; the CCC had graded 500 miles of road and built 76 buildings during the Depression.

What carried ore down from Death Valley's Keane Wonder Mine?

Aerial tramway: buckets of ore rode a cable for a mile, dropping 1,500 feet to the mill, and the lift helped make Keane Wonder one of the few Death Valley gold mines that really paid.

Which Death Valley settlement was once called Greenland Ranch?

Furnace Creek. The place once called Greenland went on to log the hottest air temperature ever measured on Earth.

Which viewpoint on the crest of the Black Mountains looks down on Badwater from about 5,476 feet?

Dante's View, at about 5,475 feet on the Black Mountains crest beside Coffin Peak, looks straight down on Badwater's salt flats; on a clear day both the lowest and highest points in the lower 48 are in sight.

Which Death Valley animal can live its whole life without ever drinking water?

Kangaroo rat: its body makes all the water it needs from the dry seeds it eats, so it never has to find a drink.

Which animal, introduced to Death Valley by miners, is now an invasive rival of its bighorn sheep?

Burros: descended from the African wild ass, the miners' pack animals went wild in the backcountry, where they strip the plants around the scarce springs that native wildlife depends on.

Which famously long-lived tree grows near the top of Death Valley's Panamint Range?

Bristlecone pine: trees of a kind that can live for more than 4,000 years cling to the cold high ridges, in sight of the hottest valley floor on Earth.

Death Valley is a certified Dark Sky Park even though which big city lies about 100 miles away?

Las Vegas. To qualify, the park refitted the outdoor lighting at its own facilities to cut glare and sky glow.

Until a crash in 2019, visitors came to Death Valley's Rainbow Canyon to photograph what?

Military jets: pilots had trained in the canyon for decades, drawing photographers to its rim, until the 2019 crash killed a pilot, injured several onlookers and ended the flights.

What kind of landform is Death Valley itself, geologically?

A graben is a block of crust that has dropped between faults as the land pulls apart, and this one is still on the move: the valley floor keeps sinking while the mountains beside it rise.

What is the jagged field of salt-crystal spires on the floor of Death Valley called?

Devil's Golf Course is a bed of rock salt weathered into jagged pinnacles, left behind when a lake that once covered the valley floor evaporated.

Which industrialist bought the Montgomery-Shoshone mine near Death Valley in 1906 and brought its boomtown piped water and electricity?

Charles M. Schwab, the steel magnate, paid for water mains and power lines as well as a huge mill, but the ore soon thinned, the shares collapsed and the mine shut in 1911.

Death Valley is the largest national park in the lower 48 states; which famous park ranks second?

Yellowstone held the title until 1994, when Congress added 1.3 million acres to the old Death Valley monument and made it a park of about 3.4 million; only four parks in Alaska are bigger.

The beehive-shaped Wildrose kilns in Death Valley's Panamint Range were built in 1877 to make what?

Charcoal, burned from pinyon pine to fuel the smelters of silver-lead mines 25 miles away. The kilns seem to have worked for only about two years, which may be why they survive in such good shape.

What gives the hills of Artists Palette in Death Valley their pinks, greens and yellows?

Minerals in volcanic deposits: iron compounds weathering in the old ash give the reds, pinks and yellows, and other minerals add the greens, like daubs of paint across the hillside.

The remnants of which 2023 hurricane brought Death Valley a year's rain in one day?

Hilary: the August storm's flash floods damaged every road in the park, and it was two months before the first of them reopened to visitors.