Plate Tectonics I: Death Valley

Plate Tectonics I: Death Valley

Death Valley is Growing Wider

Left: Map of US, Death Valley marked along California-Nevada border. Right: Mountains of Death Valley
Left: Map of U.S. with location of Death Valley marked. Right: Mountains along the side of Death Valley.
Credit: R.B. Alley © Penn State is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0(link is external)

Death Valley National Park of California and adjacent Nevada sits as deep as 282 feet below sea level near Badwater, the lowest land in the western hemisphere. Yet, Telescope Peak in the Panamint Range, 11,049 feet high, is in the park less than 20 miles west of Badwater, and Mt. Whitney, at 14,494 feet the highest peak in the continental United States, is only about 80 miles away.

Death Valley is the hottest, driest place in the United States. The hottest air temperatures ever recorded reliably in the world were reached in 2020 and 2021 in Death Valley. (130oF or 54oC), and 125oF is common. All of the rainfall (about 2 inches or 5 cm per year) evaporates quickly.

Occasionally, water will sit on mud flats for a while (especially in the colder winter) before evaporating to leave salt deposits. Sometimes in winter, the water freezes on top, and strong winds blow the ice, dragging rocks that are frozen in it. The tracks of such rocks, at the Devil’s Race Track (see the great pictures in the vTrip), long puzzled people before the answer was discovered. (And you’ll still find people who argue about the tracks and rocks out on the flat surface—no one has ever watched the rocks when they were moving!) During the ice age, more rain and cooler temperatures than today caused the valley to fill with water, forming Lake Manly, which was about 90 miles (150 km) long and almost 600 feet (200 m) deep at its deepest.

Salts left on mud flats by evaporating waters often contain boron, a rare element that has leached from volcanic rocks nearby and been carried into the valley by streams. Boron is used in soaps, water softeners, pottery glazes, and other things. Mining of the boron-bearing borax salts began in the early 1880s, and they were hauled out by the famous 20-mule teams. Mining was allowed to continue in the park after it was established (as a national monument in 1933, and a national park in 1994), but has ended now. Copper, gold, silver, lead, and talc have been mined in or near the park.

A mountain range along Death Valley. The foreground is in shadow.
Mountains along the side of Death Valley.
Credit: R.B. Alley © Penn State is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0(link is external)

The great depth of Death Valley was not excavated by a steam shovel or an atomic bomb, nor were the rocks ground down by rivers, wind, or glaciers. The bottom of Death Valley was dropped downward, as the sides of the valley were pulled apart, playing their role in the great motions of the planet’s tectonic plates. This animation provides a brief description.

Video: Death Valley Animation (2:24)

Click here for a transcript of the Death Valley Animation video.

Dr. Richard Alley: Sierra Nevada Mountains, a big, beautiful mountain range sitting way the heck up there. Got gimongous trees growing on top of it, and so you're going to tell that this is a slice that I am showing you through the mountain range, and then bang, down into Death Valley, way down, deep, hot, starkly, gloriously beautiful place. Place you desperately do not wish to be in the summer without your water bottle. But then there's another range, and another valley, and another range, all the way across Nevada, many more than shown here. And, eventually, up in the Wasatch in Utah, end up where you'll find all these skiers standing around. That's Snowbird, so here's a skier so you can remember that this is Snowbird.

And so this is a picture of the West. If, however, you could see underground, what you would find is that there's a break along the front of the mountains. And that break continues on down. And all of these things have breaks sitting underneath them, running down underground. They're earthquake faults.

Furthermore, what you would find is that there has been motion, that the mountains have been raised and the valleys have been dropped, the mountains raised and the valleys dropped all the way across here. And for this to be happening, there has to be space made for the valleys to drop into. And so, in fact, the west is getting wider, and that creates the space into which the valleys drop and the mountains raise.

If you were able to find a particular layer of rock that you cared about, you might find it up here, and then you would find it way down below somewhere. And then you'd find it up, and then you'd find it down below, and so on across. And so it's a fascinating thing that the West is getting wider. You can measure this with GPS. It's actually there. It's shown in the geology, and there's a big story here.

In addition, one thing that one finds in the West is that there are volcanoes, as well. And those volcanoes tend to come-- that blue line-- it really should be a red line there-- the volcanoes come up, and they often leak up along the cracks, and spout up along the sides like this. And you get pretty little volcanoes growing. And that's part of the important story of how the West works, as well.

Credit: R.B. Alley © Penn State Dutton Institute(link is external). "Death Valley Animation(link is external)." YouTube. Dec 20, 2011.

Take a Tour of Death Valley National Park

Take a stroll through one of the lowest pieces of land in the Western Hemisphere (282 feet below sea level), a place that, strangely enough, also happens to be adjacent to the highest point of land in the lower 48 states of the U.S., the 14,494-foot mountain peak of Mt. Whitney. Below are two virtual tours of Death Valley. In the first one, most photos are from a visit by former Penn Stater Peter Fawcett, who has gone on to be a professor at the University of New Mexico. The second is from a visit by former Penn Stater John Fegyveresi, who has gone on to be a professor at Northern Arizona University.

Optional: Want to see more?