Death Valley National Park Self-Guided Audio Driving Tour. Every twist and turn you take in the park reveals a new display of buckled, distorted rock formations that boggle the mind as to how it was sculpted by nature. These events include exhumation of the detachment surfaces now exposed in the Black Mountains (Holm et al., 1992; Holm and Dokka, 1993) and, outside Death Valley, extension in the Cottonwood Mountains (Snow and Lux, 1999), the Inyo Range (Lee et al., 2009), and the Kingston PeakTecopa Basin area (Calzia and Rm, 2000). Another important detachment surface is exposed at Tucki Mountain, located at the north end of the Panamint Range on the west side of Death Valley (TM on Fig. In some places the dolomite has transformed into marble by heat . The Major Geologic Events of Death Valley - GSOC Granitic intrusions and volcanics, not known to be represented by sedimentary deposits. It overlies a 19.8 0.2 Ma (K/Ar age) tuff and is in turn overlain by a 13.7 0.4 Ma (K/Ar age) tuff (Cemen et al., 1999). Ninemile is light-to moderate-brown shaly siltstone and black and gray silty limestone and dolomite. Over time, the sediments compressed into limestone and a related calcium-magnesium carbonate called dolomite. *3 Members* a large, cliff-forming carbonate unit with three members (Dunderberg/Halfpint Members, Smokey Member) basal shale and silty limestone beds of this formation are persistently fossiliferous characterized by trilobites, conodonts, and the brachiopod Linnarssonella - Dunderberg/ Halfpint Members are divided into seven facies and contain sponge Hintzespongia, spicule-like elements of Chancelloria, eocrinoid fragments, lingulid and acrotretid brachiopods, trilobites, and single-element species of paraconodonts and protocondonts - Smokey Membercharacterized by the black and buff colored banded dolomite also contains stromatolites and thrombolites within packstones and grain stones, a dark dolomite above the middle of the Nopah Formation contains small-silicified Trempleauan gastropods, a singular mollusk Matthevia, and trilobites. So both flanks of the Panamint Range display fault geometries that indicate detachment surfaces tracking over the top of the range, rather than underneath it. 9 Furnace Creek Formation Winds strong enough for sandblasting come from the north and the south. 6 Nova Formation Along the east side of Tucki Mountain, extension is marked by Paleozoic sedimentary rocks in fault contact with Proterozoic rocks that have been tectonically exhumed from mid-crustal (greenschist; Hodges et al., 1987) levels. It is also the driest desert in North America, contains relief of over 11,000 feet and exposes a remarkably full geologic history spanning 2.5 billion years (2.5 Ga.). 33 Zabriskie Quartzite The petroglyphs here are made possible because many of the rocks in these arid conditions have desert varnish on them. Mostly resistant, gray, white, and tan, rhyolitic lava flows and volcanic domes, and subordinate ashflow and airfall tuff. The low-angle detachment surfaces in the latter category are normal faults linking the strike-slip faults. But due to the uplift when the next flood hit the area it would deeply cut the streambed which forms stairstep-shaped banks. Death Valley NP is renowned world-wide for its exposed, complex, unique tectonics and diverse geologic resources. In all current models, strike-slip and low-angle extensional faults are regarded as synchronous. It would appear that, as the southern portion of the San Andreas fault joined up to the northern Gulf of California, the large-scale restraining bend in the San Andreas fault formed by the Mojave Block (Fig. The dolomite was later deeply buried by younger sediment. The Basin and Range is characterized by block faulting and, in areas of large-magnitude extension like Death Valley, by exhumation of middle and lower crustal level rocks in core complexes (Davis, 1980; Armstrong, 1982; Stewart, 1998; Dickinson, 2002). Lee et al. 74, 1: 376-381, rocks that mysteriously move across its surface, "USGS National Elevation Dataset (NED) 1 meter Downloadable Data Collection from The National Map 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) - National Geospatial Data Asset (NGDA) National Elevation Data Set (NED)", Death Valley National Park Furnace Creek Area (U.S. National Park Service), "Eureka Dunes, Death Valley National Park", "Death Valley Has a Secret Shrine toTea", "Earthquake: 3.2 quake strikes near Teakettle Junction in Death Valley", USGS: Death Valley National Park Virtual Geology Field Trip, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Places_of_interest_in_the_Death_Valley_area&oldid=1150267321, This page was last edited on 17 April 2023, at 05:09. b. Cemented gravel, silty and saliferous playa deposits; various salts, especially borates, more than 5,000 feet thick. This particular form of desert varnish takes 18 Owens Valley Formation Typically located at the end-depositional sites in basin interiors. 1). A better interpretation is that the Hanaupah detachment does indeed correlate with the Tucki detachment and that this detachment tracks up the flank and over the top of the Panamint Range, just like the Tucki detachment tracks over the top of Tucki Mountain. Death Valley is located in three partly overlapping structural provinces (Fig. from. 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. Volcanic action heaved the beds into mountain ranges, folding the marble layers. Total Driving Time To/From Las Vegas: 4.5 hours. 1. No fossils. Dashed line shows inferred location of the detachment fault across Tucki Mountain. The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes are at the northern end of the valley floor and are nearly surrounded by mountains on all sides. Concentrically structured algal ovoids, columnar and branching stromatolites, Girvanella trilobites, and trace fossils of: Planolites, Cruziana, Rusophycus. East of Death Valley, the Tecopa Basin (TB, Fig. The massive expanse of white is made up of almost pure table salt. In NTS area, unit is from 700 to 1,150 m thick, about 600 m thick in the Montgomery Mountains, and 640 to 820 m thick in the northwest Spring Mountains. Here, detachment faults that dip to the west, like the Emigrant fault at Tucki Mountain, have been mapped by Cichanski (2000). American Scientist. While flooded, some of the salt is dissolved, then is redeposited as clean, sparkling crystals when the water evaporates. Death Valley is a playground for geology enthusiasts, maybe even more like a Mecca. c. Interbedded limestone, silty limestone, silstone, sandstone, and shale. This cross section includes the thickness of Cenozoic sediment fill as determined by Blakely and Ponce (2002; Fig. Mosaic Canyon - Death Valley National Park (U.S. National Park Service) 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. Permian-Pennsylvanian Conglomerate, equivalent to the Funeral Formation? In the White Mountains northwest of Death Valley, Stockli et al. I've only ever hiked it in January and December, and even then it felt warm. When Burchfiel and Stewart (1966) first suggested that Death Valley was formed as a pull-apart basin, little was known about timing of tectonic events in the region. 4) contains some useful timing information. . The remains of a lateral leaf lobe Lyonothamnus mohavensis has been reported from the upper section of this formation. The Noonday Dolomite has since been tilted from uplift. b. Cemented fan gravel with interbedded basaltic lavas, gravels cut by veins of calcite (Mexican onyx); perhaps 1000 feet thick. Later addition of magnesium changed the limestone, a rock made of calcium carbonate, to dolomite, a calcium-magnesium carbonate. In some areas all that remains of some thick rock layers are lens-shaped pods of rock bounded on all sides by faults. This eastward propagation continues today with strike slip in the ECSZ, which will become the full plate boundary if the San Andreas fault ceases activity in western California and the plate boundary continues its eastward migration (Faulds et al., 2005). The Noonday Dolomite ( Fig. Death Valley National Park is not a summertime destination, at least in my opinion. 28 Pogonip Group Through exploratory holes drilled by the Pacific Coast Borax Company, prior to Death Valley becoming a national monument in 1934, it was discovered that the salt and gravel beds of the Devil's Golf Course extend to a depth of more than 1,000 feet (300m). Prior to this time, a thick sedimentary sequence was deposited in what is now the northern Black Mountains, with early sedimentation being mostly volcanics. Mosaic Canyon Death Valley Marble Set in Time. 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. Aguereberry Point /.r.br.i/[1] is a promontory and tourist viewpoint in the Panamint Range, within Death Valley National Park in Inyo County, eastern California. *5 Members* The upper member contains conodonts, microgastropod steinkerns, sponge spicules, and fish remains. Mixed brachiopods, corals, and crinoid stems. 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. The NevadaCalifornia state line is labeled NV/CA. 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. A dirt road provides access to an overlook of the area, but human entry into the wetland itself is prohibited in order to the protect the sensitive habitat. Thickness of Cenozoic sediments from the digital compilation of Blakely and Ponce (2002) in color. 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. Artist's Drive rises up to the top of an alluvial fan fed by a deep canyon cut into the Black Mountains. Check out the Golden Canyon Hike audio tour on the free NPS App. Since definition of these domains, satellite geodesy (GPS) has shown that the Walker Lane belt and ECSZ are together accommodating 25% of present-day plate motion between the Pacific and North American plates (Miller et al., 2001; Hammond and Thatcher, 2007). As shown in Figure 6, this section is also seen in the extensional allochthons on the east flank of Tucki Mountain. If the detachment system along the east side of the Panamints is the one along which the Panamints moved, as in the model of Stewart (1983), then there is a correlation problem. The Paleozoic extensional allochthons are located above this duplex. Eocene Maximum thickness about 2,000 feet. a. Trilobites, orthid brachiopods, the mollusk Ctenodonta, and conodonts have also been reported from this unit. 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. Regional topography of western North America, showing location of Death Valley and tectonic domains. 1) occurred in the Middle Miocene as a result of footwall uplift associated with east-west extension. This deformational event shifted the crust vertically, creating thinning and thickening of some sedimentary layers as they were being deposited. The first event metamorphosed Death Valley's Precambrian basement rocks and occurred around 1,700 million years ago. a. These consist of sediments of the Pahrump Group, Noonday Dolomite, and Johnnie Formation, along with some outcrops of Proterozoic basement (Fig. HIKING NOT ADVISED AFTER 10 AM IN THE SUMMER. Cross section across the Panamint Range and Black Mountains, profile C in previous location maps. Telescope Peak is the highest point within Death Valley National Park and was named for the great distance visible from the summit from atop this desert mountain one can see for over one hundred miles in many directions, including west to Mount Whitney, and east to Charleston Peak. Overview. 35 Stirling Quartzite Along this profile, then, Death Valley is an asymmetric graben with a steep (50) eastern fault and less steep (30) western fault. Unit forms massive cliffs, 975 m thick in northwestern Spring Mountains, 1,100 m thick in the Montgomery Mountains, 2,100 m thick in the Funeral Mountains, 1,500 m thick in the Belted Range and 700 m thick at Bare Mountain. Mesquite Spring is located in the northernmost part of Death Valley. Reviews. Data from Smith and Sandwell (1997). 36 Johnnie Formation from. b. This cross section, like Figure 6, uses topographic data from the DEM and outcrop geology from Workman et al. This third event folded the layered Precambrian and Cambrian sedimentary rocks. 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. Faults are from the USGS Quaternary faults database (2009). Along the road to the canyon stands Leadfield, a ghost town dating to the 1920s. Lake Manly once covered the valley to a depth of 30 feet (9.1m). The following list of geologic formations and corresponding ages represents what has been collected in the park and are available for viewing at our curatorial facility. Death Valley National Park - Wikipedia 4). 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. This part of the valley has numerous cotton top cactus, blister beetles and cholla cactus. The Walker Lane belt and ECSZ therefore together form a single strike-slip zone, which will be referred to as the ECSZ in this paper. From here Badwater Basin can be seen, which A siltstone/shale formation that is exposed in the northern part of Panamint Range in the Tucki Mountain Region. In Snow and Wernicke's (2000) reconstruction, this correlation is used to restore the Panamint Range to a position adjacent to the Nopah Range. 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. Contained within its boundaries is a diverse rock record stretching throughout most of geologic time. See Table 1 for data and explanations of abbreviations used. The Lower Limestone Member was collected and is described as predominantly limestone of intermediate grays, in 1- to 3-foot beds, much of it containing silt, sand, or siliceous pebbles; interstratified with shale, partly carbonaceous; small, dark-gray spheroidal chert nodules in limestone near base. Light-to moderate-brown, dusky-yllowish brown, varicolored red, and white to light-brown quartzite and sandstone; sand grains are fine to medium-grained. Another part of salt creek runs with brackish water year-round. Figure 3 is a tectonostratigraphic chart showing a compilation of Neogene geologic events in the Death Valley region. Wind, water, and plate tectonics are still hard at work shaping the park on a day-to-day basis. Red Wall Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California These volcanics correlate across Death Valley with the Rhodes Tuff and Sheepshead Andesite in the southern Black Mountains (TC+RT, Fig. Natural Bridge Canyon: On the east side of the park . 41 formations are listed with a number correlating them to the original reference used to describe and locate them. Dolomite! - Review of Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley - Tripadvisor Locally, fair dolomite near middle arid at top. A Walk Through the Valley of Death | University of Notre Dame 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.