In the stratigraphic column, formations from the north and west of the area are on the left so that left to right is equivalent to north and west to south and east. Tucholke and Lin (1998) compiled dimensional data on 17 oceanic megamullions. b. The naming convention for sedimentary formations follows that established by Hunt and Mabey (1966) and subsequently modified by Snow and Lux (1999) and Knott et al. Typically located at the end-depositional sites in basin interiors. 3) near the top of the beds (Knott et al., 2005). Some of these have been expanded or even merged by sandblasting. Geologic wonders of Death Valley: Photo journey through Mosaic Canyon per adult. Faults are from the USGS Quaternary faults database. [8] Endemic species include the Eureka Dune Grass, the Eureka Evening Primrose and the Shining Locoweed. The first event metamorphosed Death Valley's Precambrian basement rocks and occurred around 1,700 million years ago. 48 Hours in Death Valley National Park - bemytravelmuse.com a. The Panamint Range is more symmetric, with perhaps a slightly steeper western flank. The first phase, lasting from ca. Titus Canyon is a narrow gorge in the Grapevine Mountains near the eastern boundary of Death Valley National Park. Permian-Pennsylvanian With the northwest strike of the turtleback structures, parallel to the inferred direction of strike slip, an origin of these features as a result of the strike slip is suggested. Overview. The highest temperature in North America was recorded at Furnace Creek Ranch (134F or 57C). Eocene and Paleocene Stewart (1983) proposed that the Panamint Range forms the hanging wall of an extensional system that transported the Panamint Range westward from on top or east of the Black Mountains, with the latter forming the footwall of this extensional system. Titus Canyon is a narrow gorge in the Grapevine Mountains near the eastern boundary of Death Valley National Park. - See 519 traveler reviews, 417 candid photos, and great deals for Death Valley National Park, CA, at Tripadvisor. 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. 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 a showcase of geologic features as well as a beautiful example of one of Death Valley's many canyons. 32 Carrara Formation Figure 10A, Present day, shows the geometry of the Basin and Range detachment surface. 3; Snyder and Hodges, 2000). Red Wall Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California Geology of the Death Valley area, from Workman et al. Death Valley is a playground for geology enthusiasts, maybe even more like a Mecca. Ventifact Ridge is a part of a basaltic lava flow. 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. b. Well-bedded quartzite in beds 1-5 feet thick comprising thick members of quartzite 700-800 feet thick separated by 500 feet of purple shale, crossbedding conspicuous in quartzite. c. Includes (from top to base) Smoky, Halfpint, and Dunderberg Shale members. 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. Search for other works by this author on: This site uses cookies. Sharp edges of ventifacts called Kanters are formed when two or more facets (planar surfaces) intersect. Geosphere 2011;; 7 (1): 171182. Unit is about 345 to 380 m thick in the Spring Mountains and southern Sheep Range, 365 m thick in the northern Last Chance Range, 457 m in the Panamint Range area, about 530 m thick in the Nopah Range and in the Cottonwood Mountains, 766 m thick in the Pahranagat Range, 720 m thick in the NTS area. East of Death Valley, the Tecopa Basin (TB, Fig. Topography is colored with a nonlinear scale ranging from pale blues below sea level through greens and browns to white of the Sierra Nevada peaks. The age of fill in Death Valley is not directly observed. Hunt and Mabey (1966) recognized this structure and correlated it with the Amargosa Thrust of Noble (1941). The ECSZ was originally defined by Dokka and Travis (1990a) based on mapping of strike-slip faults in the Mojave Desert, and included the Death Valley area (i.e., north of the Garlock fault) as its northern limit. C. cornicula. 1 Alluvial fan and lacustrine deposits 252. (1974) showed that the turtlebacks include many linear structures parallel to the direction of strike slip, ranging from minute slickenslides to fault mullions tens or hundreds of meters in amplitude (Wright et al., 1974, p. 54). Based on research, 61 formations are known to exist in the park. Tucki Mountain at the north end of the range (Fig. Another part of salt creek runs with brackish water year-round. 33 Zabriskie Quartzite 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. Exposed in Butte Valley 1 mile south of this area; 8,000 feet of metasediments and volcanics. Winds strong enough for sandblasting come from the north and the south. a. This cross section includes the thickness of Cenozoic sediment fill as determined by Blakely and Ponce (2002; Fig. 2). Over time, the sediments compressed into limestone and a related calcium-magnesium carbonate called dolomite. Numerous trilobite trash beds in lower part yield fragments of olenellid trilobites. *deposited in marine basins during Precambrian continental rifting algal marine dolomite. This particular form of desert varnish takes from. Ages of basalt within the succession constrain the age of the formation to between 5 and 3.3 Ma (Nyborg and Buchheim, 2009). *3 Members* In the lower, cherty member there are Halysites, Favosites, Syringopora, rugose corals, articulate brachiopods, conodonts, and crinoid debris. a. Interbedded fluvial and marine sequences fine-grained, cross-stratified, locally conglomeratic sandstone, intervals of siltstone and carbonate rocks in the Funeral Mnts. periodically flows at the surface. Length: 4.5 miles, to the fork in the canyon Difficulty: Moderate. Triassic Late Precambrian The tiny grains of quartz and feldspar that form the sinuous sculptures that make up this dune field began as much larger pieces of solid rock. At the junction where the unimproved road from Ubehebe Crater meets roads to the Racetrack Playa and Hunter Mountain (364537N 1173233W / 36.76028N 117.54250W / 36.76028; -117.54250), there is a sign reading "Teakettle Junction. Dark-brown to orange burrow mottling is prevalent, and several layers have dark-brown weathering chert beds and nodules. and a different linear scale from 5 to 25 m.y. In upper part, gastropods. 4). This is illustrated in Figure 8, a cross section across the Panamint Range near Trail Canyon. Topography (USGS DEM, 2009) in gray shades fills in spaces where there are no Cenozoic sediments. The Neoproterozoic-Cambrian section in Death Valley consists of (in ascending order) the Pahrump Group (Crystal Spring Formation, Beck Spring Dolomite, and Kingston Peak Formation), the Noonday Dolomite, the Johnnie Formation, the Stirling Quartzite, the Wood Canyon Formation (with the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary), the Zabriskie Quartzite, and part of the Carrara Formation (Nolan, 1924 . Like the Black Mountains sections, these sediments show little evidence of syndepositional tectonism, yet are now highly deformed, with almost vertical dips in places (Beratan et al., 1999). from. In lower beds: Protopliomerops , Kirkella , Orthid brachiopods. Uper part is mostly cliff-foming, orange to gray silty limestone, and lower part contains mostly clastic rocks. Late Miocene (12 Ma), 8 Copper Canyon Formation Booming Dunes: For reasons not yet fully understood, sand sliding down the slipface of a dune can produce booming noises at startling volumes. 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. Miocene A Walk Through the Valley of Death | University of Notre Dame Natural Bridge Canyon: On the east side of the park . *3 Members* upper member (Papoose Lake Member) is a fossiliferous shale containing trilobites of Glossopleura middle member (Informal Middle Member)contains trilobite "hash beds" with fragments of Ehmaniella and with linguloid brachiopod beds within a shale layer lower member (Banded Mountain Member) contains no fossils. Elevation Gain: 535 ft to 834ft (163m to 254m) In Pliocene time, the Furnace Creek and Funeral Formations were deposited in the northern Black Mountains, these sections being predominantly clastic with little evidence for syndepositional tectonism. Gear List. The above summary of younger deposits in the Death Valley region highlights some of the structurally important inferences that can be drawn from these sections. Basin and Range extensional allochthons occur along the east flank of the range; these formed during MioceneEarly Pliocene Basin and Range extension. Darwin Falls is a waterfall located on the western edge of Death Valley National Park near the settlement of Panamint Springs, California. Blakely et al. This relative timing can be seen in Figure 3, where events associated with Basin and Range extension predate deposition of most of the Artist Drive through Funeral Formations. Areas below sea level are in blue. Massive black dolomite, 400-800 feet thick. 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. 4) commenced prior to intrusion of the 10.6 Ma Little Chief stock, which was intruded to 3 km below the contemporary surface. The small, narrow valley where the creek and falls are located features a rare collection of riparian greenery in the vast desert and is home to indigenous fauna such as quail. 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. Recaptaculites, echinoderm plates and oncolitic algae (?) Data from Smith and Sandwell (1997). a. In fact it is lithified alluvial sediment. Cross section across Tucki Mountain along profile A in previous location maps. Dokka and Travis (1990b) favored an initiation age of 106 Ma for the Mojave portion of the ECSZ. (2002) and, for the area west of the Panamint Range, from Saucedo et al. Permian The Major Geologic Events of Death Valley - GSOC 3 Ma, initiation of the East California Shear Zone started development of the present-day topographic depression of Death Valley, formed as a pull-apart basin associated with this strike slip. Group is about 410 m thick in the Dry Mountain area of the Cottonwood Mountains, 384 m thick in the Panamint Range, 320 m thick in the Nopah Range, 360 to 700 m thick in the Spring Mountains and souther Sheep Range, 957 m thick in the Pahrangat Range, and 1,050 m in NTS area. 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. The canyon follows faults that formed when the rocky crust of the Death Valley region began stretching just a few million years ago. Pliocene (3.3 3.5 Ma) 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. Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California-Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada.The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley.The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of . As the resort grew, the marshes and wetlands around it shrank. This shear zone developed as a result of the evolving tectonics of western North America, particularly eastward propagation of the boundary between the Pacific and North America plates. A recent phase of this propagation was opening of the Gulf of California and initiation of the San Andreas fault as the plate boundary at 56 Ma (Lonsdale, 1989; Atwater and Stock, 1998). The kilns were located here as the trees single-leaf pinyon pine (Pinus monophylla) and Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) dominate the landscape in the upper Panamint Mountains. 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). Topographic map of Fall Canyon - Death Valley NPS - Dan Kish Length: 6 mile (9.7km) out and back, round trip Time: 3.5 hours round trip Difficulty: Moderate to Difficult Elevation Gain: 2,460 ft (752m) Location: The 2.7 mile (4.3km) unpaved two-way section of Titus Canyon Road is located 11.9 miles north of CA-190 on Scotty's Castle Road. Ninemile Formation is absent in most locations in the eastern part of the map area. 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. 3.0 Hours of Monument Valley's Sunrise or Sunset 44 Tour. The Black Mountains were elevated as a result of footwall uplift, with the well-known turtleback structures being megamullions along these bounding faults. As Figure 4 shows, outcrops of Paleozoic sediments along the eastern side of the range are continuous from Tucki Mountain southward along the eastern slope of the Panamints, and these Paleozoic sediments are interpreted to be Basin and Rangestyle extensional allochthons. Death Valley is located in three partly overlapping structural provinces (Fig. 14 Skidoo Granite These will be used to build a structural model for evolution of the basin, but before doing that, it is useful to examine the geometry of Basin and Range detachment faults in the basin. Holocene - Pleistocene Early + Middle Pleistocene Most of the holes in the basalt are vesicles that were formed when gas escaped from the cooling lava. c. In NTS area, consists of (from top to base) the Antelope Valley Limestone, Ninemile Formation, and the Goodwin Limestone). It also coincides with final opening of the northern Gulf of California and initiation of the southern portion of the San Andreas fault (Dorsey et al., 2007). Cichanski (2000) suggests that the higher-angle faults are part of the Panamint Valley strike-slip fault. 26 Ely Springs Dolomite Late Precambrian (1990). These colors are caused by the oxidation of different metals (iron compounds produce red, pink and yellow, decomposition of tuff-derived mica produces green, and manganese produces purple). Canyon del Muerto (Chinle) - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go Later addition of magnesium changed the limestone, a rock made of calcium carbonate, to dolomite, a calcium-magnesium carbonate. $14.99. As mentioned above in the discussion on Tucki Mountain, the west side of Tucki Mountain is today a low-angle fault. The Noonday Dolomite has since been tilted from uplift. 4 Mormon Point Formation It is located in the Basin and Range extensional province (Sonder and Jones, 1999; Burchfiel et al., 1992), in the Walker Lane belt (Stewart, 1988), and also in the Eastern California Shear Zone (ECSZ; Dokka and Travis, 1990a). Locally metamorphosed to sub-greenschist to lower greenschist facies at Bare Mountain, Funeral Mountains, and parts of the northwestern Spring Mountains. Wind, water, and plate tectonics are still hard at work shaping the park on a day-to-day basis. Artist's Palette is an area on the face of the Black Mountains noted for a variety of rock colors. Stromatolites, thrombolites, oncoids, and brachiopod fragments are common, pelmatozoan ossicles less common. Between the Last Chance Range and Saline Mountains is the graben Eureka Valley. Erosion over the millennia since the eruption revealed multi-colored stripes on the crater walls dating to the Miocene. Total thickness of formation 1,200-1,500 feet. Death Valley National Park is one of many units within the National Park service established because of its underlying geologic theme. Proterozoic basement consists of metamorphic basement and sediments of the Pahrump Group and Johnnie Formation. The dip of the steeper portion of the west side of the basin is 30, and the surface projection of this portion is close to faults at the base of the alluvial fans on the west side of Death Valley (Hunt and Mabey, 1966; USGS Quaternary faults database), again suggesting that the basin is fault-bounded, as shown in Figure 9. The Pahrump Group is found in the western Panamint Range and southern Black Mountains region, in a configuration that Wright et al. Goniatite coquina beds, formed chiefly of the cephalopod Cravenoceras hesperiam, occur within this formation. In Figure 11 a sinusoidal function with these dimensions is included in the cross section across Badwater. The northern nose of the Panamints is formed by an extensional core complex, Tucki Mountain (Hodges et al., 1987; Wernicke et al., 1988b). 13 Strozzis Ranch Rhyolite "Tr" Jurassic (134 Ma, 156 Ma, 178 Ma, 182 Ma) contains the lowest dry point in North America. Syringopora (open-spaced colonies) Caninia cf. Death Valley NP is renowned world-wide for its exposed, complex, unique tectonics and diverse geologic resources. (1976) relate to a Proterozoic aulacogen. Abundant large gastropods in massive dolomite at top: Palliseria and Maclurites, associated with Receptaculites. Hike Mosaic Canyon in Death Valley National Park! *2 Members* light-colored, cliff forming quarzite -Emigrant Pass Member and Resting Spring Member nearshore and foreshore deposits containing ichnofossils (e.g. Friday fold: Noonday Dolomite in Mosaic Canyon In all current models, strike-slip and low-angle extensional faults are regarded as synchronous. Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley National Park - Explore the USA Check out the Golden Canyon Hike audio tour on the free NPS App. Walking into Mosaic Canyon is like walking into a museum. Contains basalt, alluvial and lacustrine deposits and vertebrate trace fossils in the lacustrine strata (e.g. I would like to thank Dave Reynolds and Stefan Boettcher for introducing me to Death Valley geology. Cambrian Base of member is marked by the regionally extensive "silty unit". Noteworthy among the geologic features of the Death Valley region of eastern California is an extensively exposed accumulation of sedimentary rock and sill-forming diabase, Precambrian in age, as much as 5,500 m thick, and essentially unmetamorphosed. 10 Timber Mountain Group Mississippian Their paper was published in the same year as Hunt and Mabey's (1966) seminal paper that mapped the geology of Death Valley. Later studies suggest that in places the depth ranges up to 9,000 feet (2,700m).[6]. Wright et al. The Wood Canyon also marks the base of the Paleozoic succession that, in the Death Valley region, commonly forms Basin and Range extensional allochthons like the Funeral Mountains and Nopah Range (McAllister, 1976; Burchfiel et al., 1983; Hamilton, 1988). Late Pleistocene The wetland lies at the southern tip of the Ibex Hills, on the floor of Death Valley and just northeast of the Amargosa River. 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. Consists of a lower lagoonal or mudflat limestone. Difficulty: Moderate to Difficult Elevation Gain: 1,200 ft (366m) 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 the White Mountains northwest of Death Valley, Stockli et al. 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. The Late Miocene intrusives consist of the mafic Willow Springs pluton and the felsic Smith Mountain granite. The interpretations presented above offer some new ideas for the evolution of Death Valley. Along the eastern base of the Panamint Range, between Trail and Hanaupah Canyons (TC and HC, Fig. Total thickness Uncertain because of faulting; estimated about 3,000 feet in Panamint Range, 2,000 feet in Funeral Mountains. 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. Death Valley National Park is one of many units within the National Park service established because of its underlying geologic theme. 1 and 2; Miller and Pavlis, 2005). This model, using the preceding data and interpretations, includes two tectonic phases separated by a short interval of relative tectonic quiescence, as summarized in the timing chart in Figure 3. Ash layers, important for age control on sediments, are included in the igneous activity column, although the volcanism that produced these ash beds was usually well outside the Death Valley area (Knott et al., 2005). Goodwin is medium gray to grayish-orange weathering limestone and dolomite, dark-brown weathering chert layers, and distinctive intraclastic limestone conglomerate; contains trilobite and brachiopods fragments, and sparse ooids; base of Goodwin contains Late Cambrian conodonts in the Spring Mountains and souther Sheep Range. In the second phase, transtensional faulting began east of the White Mountains at 6 Ma, followed at 3 Ma by initiation of strike slip in the Owens Valley (Fig. Miller and Pavlis (2005) give an excellent overview of current data and understanding of the turtlebacks. 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. In the Ash Meadow area crinoidal columns have been found. 2) at 15.6 Ma, followed by a period of slow uplift then renewed normal slip at 2.8 Ma. This profile is close to the one shown by Hunt and Mabey (1966). The turtlebacks are megamullions very similar to megamullions adjacent to seafloor spreading centers. Diatoms, pollen. Please keep in mind that collecting rocks within Death Valley is illegal without a permit! The Death Valley region has played a key role in development of models of Basin and Range extension. These rocks are found along the full length of the Panamint Range (Fig. A feature of these intrusives is that they are intruded along the structural top of each turtleback, with the Willow Springs diorite structurally beneath the younger (Fig. Ammonites, smooth-shelled brachiopods, belemnites, and hexacorals. Cretaceous b. (2005). Neogene sediments preserved within Death Valley record the latest phases of structural evolution of the basin. Neogene tectonic activity reported by Lee et al. In the 1930s, geologist Levi F. Noble studied the faulting and folding in the area, dubbing it the "Amargosa chaos" due to the extreme warping of the rock. There does not appear to be a high-angle fault along the west side of the Panamints.
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