Lake Manly, looking north just south of the Badwater Basin parking area. 1/3/2024
Extremes in Context: Survival In and Around Death Valley
Death Valley, California is the lowest place in North America. It’s on the western side of a system of basins and ranges, the Basin and Range Province. A large watershed drains down to Badwater Basin, the valley’s lowest point at 282 feet below sea level. Here’s a map from 1935 of much of the region trying in entice tourists to visit. The Death Valley Inn was built in 1927 by the Death Valley Hotel Company, Ltd., a subsidiary of the Pacific Coast Borax Company.
Vintage Death Valley region map, circa 1935.
Death Valley is in a region of extremes. The hottest air temperature ever recorded, 134° F, occurred in the valley on July 10th, 1913. Death Valley is also the driest place in the Mojave Desert, North America’s driest desert, at less than 2 inches of rain per year. The dryness contributes to the heating effect in the valley. Paradoxically, Death Valley’s dryness and heat are due to the moisture of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the third range west of the valley after the Panamints and White-Inyos. The Sierras catch most of the water coming from the Pacific Ocean in the winter. The greatest snow depth ever recorded in the world occurred at Tamarack on the west flank of the Sierras. The highest peak in the Sierras and lower 48 states is Mt. Whitney, at 14,505 feet. The largest trees in the world, the giant sequoias, are only found on the west slopes of the Sierras. The White-Inyo Mountains are home to the oldest known living individual tree in the world, a Great Basin bristlecone pine. South of Death Valley in the Lucerne Valley is the King Clone creosote, one of the oldest woody plants in the world at 11,700 years. Meanwhile, in nooks and crannies where water has persisted in the valleys of the region are some of the toughest fish in the world, desert pupfish. The most famous of those are the Devil’s Hole pupfish, on the east slope of the Amargosa Valley, the next valley east of Death Valley. This section of the Lake Manly website will explore the region’s origins, these and other extremes, and interesting natural history. Of particular interest is how plants and animals can survive over millennia in the habits of region.
