Unique stock images of Death valley and the Owens Valley that can be download with a single password in high resolution.
Death Valley National Park is a
national park in the U.S. states of California and Nevada located east of the
Sierra Nevada, occupying an interface zone between the arid
Great Basin and
Mojave deserts in the United States. The park protects the northwest corner of the
Mojave Desert and contains a diverse desert environment of
salt-flats,
sand dunes,
badlands, valleys, canyons, and mountains. It is the largest national park in the lower 48 states and has been declared an
International Biosphere Reserve. Approximately 95% of the park is a designated
wilderness area.
[4] It is the hottest and driest of the national parks in the United States. The second-lowest point in the
Western Hemisphere is in
Badwater Basin, which is 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh
desert environment. Some examples include
creosote bush,
Bighorn Sheep,
Coyote, and the
Death Valley Pupfish, a survivor of much wetter times.
A series of
Native American groups inhabited the area from as early as 7000 BC, most recently the
Timbisha around 1000 AD who migrated between winter camps in the valleys and summer grounds in the mountains. A group of European-Americans that became stuck in the valley in 1849 while looking for a shortcut to the
gold fields of California gave the valley its name, even though only one of their group died there. Several short-lived
boom towns sprang up during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to mine gold and silver. The only long-term profitable
ore to be mined was
borax, which was transported out of the valley with
twenty-mule teams. The valley later became the subject of books, radio programs, television series, and movies. Tourism blossomed in the 1920s, when resorts were built around Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek. Death Valley National Monument was declared in 1933 and the park was substantially expanded and became a national park in 1994.
The natural environment of the area has been shaped largely by its geology. The valley itself is actually a
graben. The oldest
rocks are extensively
metamorphosed and at least 1.7 billion years old. Ancient, warm, shallow seas deposited marine sediments until
rifting opened the
Pacific Ocean. Additional sedimentation occurred until a
subduction zone formed off the coast. This uplifted the region out of the sea and created a line of
volcanoes. Later the
crust started to pull apart, creating the current
Basin and Range landform. Valleys filled with sediment and, during the wet times of
glacial periods, with lakes, such as
Lake Manly.
