7) is a platformal carbonate deposited unconformably across a Neoproterozoic rift basin that marks the onset of Proterozoic through Paleozoic miogeoclinal deposits of the western North American passive margin ( Wright et al., 1978 ). Later addition of magnesium changed the limestone, a rock made of calcium carbonate, to dolomite, a calcium-magnesium carbonate. The highest strandline is one of the principal clues that geologists use to estimate the depth of the lake that once filled Death Valley. Pull-apart basins are characterized by steeply dipping bounding faults (e.g., the Dead Sea graben, Garfunkel and Ben-Avraham, 1996). Winds strong enough for sandblasting come from the north and the south. Lee et al. The scarce springs and surrounding lush oases support thriving plant communities and attract a wide variety of animals. c. Unit is white, pale red, purple, pink, and gray, quarzite and sandstone, conglomeratic quartzite, and minor beds of light- to dark-brown micaceous siltstone. Occur in small bars and embankments; locally cemented with lime carbonate caliche. At the same time and further south along the Black Mountains, the Copper Canyon and Mormon Point Formations were deposited. Data from Smith and Sandwell (1997). Lee et al. 92328, Download the official NPS app before your next visit. No fossils. The main extensional detachment surface is gently folded into the arched topographic surface of Tucki Mountain (Wernicke et al., 1988b). Erosion over the millennia since the eruption revealed multi-colored stripes on the crater walls dating to the Miocene. Unlike at the Devils Golf Course, significant rainstorms flood Badwater, covering the salt pan with a thin sheet of standing water. Gear List. It features megabreccia and other rock formations, petroglyphs, and wildlife of various kinds, including bighorn sheep. This cross section includes the thickness of Cenozoic sediment fill as determined by Blakely and Ponce (2002; Fig. 3), which yields some important constraints on extensional geometry. In basal 100 feet, trilobite trash beds containing Elburgis, Pseudagnostus, Horriagnostris, Elvinia , Apsotreta. These recent studies indicate that strike-slip faulting and extension occurred in separate phases. b. Cambrian-Late Precambrian Hornblende quartz monzonite with variations. 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. By night, it's otherworldly. (1974) do not suggest that the turtlebacks themselves are mullion structures, but a comparison with oceanic megamullions suggests that this is what they are. (2005) for the UbehebeLake Rogers Formation (U-LR), also in the Cottonwoods area, and from Snow and Lux (1999) for the Bat Mountain Formation. . A poorly preserved brachiopod assemblage has been found. Upper and lower third of units consists of interbedded red and brown quartzite, brownish green micaceous siltstone and minor orange-weathering silty dolomite. Their paper was published in the same year as Hunt and Mabey's (1966) seminal paper that mapped the geology of Death Valley. This idea has been incorporated into several models for the structural evolution of Death Valley. Devonian 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. This age is an important constraint on initiation of Basin and Range extension, as the Bat Mountain Formation is interpreted to have been deposited in a basin formed during the early stages of extension (Cemen et al., 1999). Stromatolites occur at several localities within the limestone deposits. Miocene b. The younger age is further confirmed by occurrence of one of the Mesquite Spring tuffs (3.13.35 Ma; numbers 7 and 8 in Fig. Death Valley National Park is one of many units within the National Park service established because of its underlying geologic theme. I would like to thank Dave Reynolds and Stefan Boettcher for introducing me to Death Valley geology. Extrapolating this age to the 4.7 km maximum depth in the Badwater Basin (Blakely and Ponce, 2002) yields an age of 4.85.3 Ma for the base of the section. (2002; Fig. The fourth and final event occurred quite recently, geologically speaking. Later researchers discovered that the region had experienced substantial tension that pulled large blocks of crust apart. The highest temperature in North America was recorded at Furnace Creek Ranch (134F or 57C). The cross section of Figure 9 with, superimposed at Badwater, a generalized cross section across an oceanic megamullion structure (megamullion data from Tucholke and Lin, 1998). Cambrian From the left, the columns show the igneous events, stratigraphy, tectonic events, and regional tectonic regime. This dolomite has been correlated to the Noonday Dolomite (Hunt and Mabey, 1966; Williams et al., 1976), which is also found in the footwall of the Black Mountains detachment fault at Copper Canyon and Mormon Point (Williams et al., 1976), although Miller and Pavlis (2005) question details of this correlation. Contains limestone, siltstone, and shale units with the fusilinids Schwagerina and Pseudoschwagerina, solitary corals, bryozoans, and gastropods. Booming Dunes: For reasons not yet fully understood, sand sliding down the slipface of a dune can produce booming noises at startling volumes. b. Cemented fan gravel with interbedded basaltic lavas, gravels cut by veins of calcite (Mexican onyx); perhaps 1000 feet thick. Dark red lines in Death Valley are faults from Blakely et al. Other historic charcoal kilns in the United States include the Cottonwood Charcoal Kilns at Owens Lake, the Piedmont Charcoal Kilns in Wyoming, and the Walker Charcoal Kiln in Arizona. American Scientist. Dashed line shows inferred location of the detachment fault across Tucki Mountain. Sediment age at the base of this well was estimated by Lowenstein et al. Generally classified as a quartz monzonite porphyry but in the area of Skidoo, it is mostly gneissic but in part porphyritic and has fluidal structures with dark phenocrysts of biotite. As summarized in Figure 6, interpretations of the extensional structures at Tucki Mountain show that the footwall of the detachment surface consists of Proterozoic basement and metasediments. Mostly shale, some limestone, abundant spherical chert nodules. 4). (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). / i) (d vli) (Tal des Todes) liegt in der Mojave-Wste und ist der trockenste Nationalpark in den USA.Er liegt sdstlich der Sierra Nevada, zum grten Teil auf dem Gebiet Kaliforniens und zu einem kleineren Teil in Nevada.Die Region ist ein Hitzepol.. Der tiefste Punkt des Tales liegt 85,95 Meter unter dem Meeresspiegel und ist zugleich . Racetrack stones only move once every two or three years and most tracks last for just three or four years. Half-day Tours. The hottest temperature ever officially recorded was in Death Valley at 134F, or 56.7C. This fuel was then transported to mines in The Argus Range, 25 miles to the west, to feed smelting and ore extraction operations. c. Quartzite, conglomeratic quartzite, siltstone, shale and minor limestone and dolomite beds. The 3 Ma restoration is shown in two phases for convenience. 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. 34 Wood Canyon Formation "[12] While the origin of the name is unknown, it has become a tradition for visitors to attach teakettles to the sign with messages written on them. Late Precambrian Places of interest in the Death Valley area - Wikipedia a. This canyon was formed through a process of cut and fill which included periodic erosive floods followed by long periods of deposition and uplift. See text for details. Schematic evolution of the cross section of Figure 9. (1976) and McAllister (1976). Mon-Fri 7am-5pm PT. a. Beds contain tabuliar-planar and trough cross bed sets, and Skolithus burrows. Panamintaspis and Blieckaspis, along with other pteraspidid, have been reported from the Lippincott Member from exposures in the Trail Canyon area. Although the ECSZ today accommodates 25% of Pacific-North America relative motion, timing of initiation of this shear zone is poorly known. As groundwater exploded into steam due to the heat of magma underneath, an empty pit was left behind and the debris spread around the field. Devonian-Silurian The term is applied to large domed structures formed in inside-corner settings at the intersections of spreading centers and transform faults (Tucholke and Lin, 1998). The event that commenced at 15.6 Ma included 16 westward tilt of the Inyo Range and 5300 m of uplift of the eastern flank, at a rapid rate of 1.9 mm/a. Shaly and silty units increase in abundance in the upper part of the formation. Pliocene-Oligocene A new interpretation presented here is that the range is a large core complex similar to the core complex at Tucki Mountain, at the northern end of the range. Consists of a lower lagoonal or mudflat limestone. These observations imply that details of the structural connection between Tucki Mountain and the east end of the Funeral Mountains must be reexamined, although a probable Early Miocene age of the Tucki Mountain section can still be used to date extension at Tucki Mountain (Cemen et al., 1999). Skolithos) and some interbedded bioturbated silstones. 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). 15 Hall Canyon Pluton The basin is the second lowest depression in the Western Hemisphere, eclipsed only by Laguna del Carbn in Argentina at 344 feet (105m). 4; the Noonday Dolomite is included in the Johnnie Formation in this digital compilation), with the highest peak of the range at Telescope Peak consisting of argillites of the Johnnie Formation (Albee et al., 1981). Mostly resistant, gray, white, and tan, rhyolitic lava flows and volcanic domes, and subordinate ashflow and airfall tuff. See Table 1 for data and explanations of abbreviations used. Also not consistent with this model is the fact that the Panamint Range is much higher in elevation (highest point is Telescope Peak, 3368 m) than the Black Mountains (highest point is Funeral Peak, 1946 m); this would mean that the hanging wall of the detachment would be higher than the footwall, a structurally unlikely scenario. As mentioned above in the discussion on Tucki Mountain, the west side of Tucki Mountain is today a low-angle fault. It was named after a line in the 1934 National Park Service guide book to Death Valley National Monument, which stated that "Only the devil could play golf" on its surface, due to a rough texture from the large halite salt crystal formations.[5]. 7 Warm Spring Granite (1976). Along the road to the canyon stands Leadfield, a ghost town dating to the 1920s. These sediments are younger than the Copper Canyon Formation, with the 0.77 Ma Bishop tuff (number 3 in Fig. This extension occurred in the Miocene (Cemen et al., 1999; Wernicke et al., 1988b). In the second 3 Ma restoration, the topography that formed as a result of young transtensional strike slip is removed. If there's a moon,. *5 Members* The upper member contains conodonts, microgastropod steinkerns, sponge spicules, and fish remains. Trends in oolite dolomitization across the - ScienceDirect Miocene Like the Bonanza King, alternating light- and dark-gray beds for distinctive color bands, but bands are thicker and more prominent. The massive expanse of white is made up of almost pure table salt. Located four miles (6.4km) south of the Artist's Drive scenic loop, the canyon contains a natural stone bridge, accessible after a fifteen-minute walk from the parking area. The west side of the basin shows a steep segment bordering the main basin and a gently dipping surface that joins to the Panamint Range. Diatoms, pollen. c. Quartzite, sandstone, siltstone, shale, and dolomite. Several thin limestone layers near the top of the formation at Quartz Spring are fossiliferous. 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. This third event folded the layered Precambrian and Cambrian sedimentary rocks. Stratigraphic nomenclature for the Proterozoic and Early Paleozoic section of the Death Valley area. 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. Der Death-Valley-Nationalpark (Anhren? Miller and Pavlis (2005) give an excellent overview of current data and understanding of the turtlebacks. Faults are from the USGS Quaternary faults database. Papoose Lake Member is mostly dark-gray dolomite with distinctive brownish-gray to grayish-orange burrow mottles; sparse limestone and silty dolomite beds. c. Widely exposed in map area. Lake Manly once covered the valley to a depth of 30 feet (9.1m). In just a few million years, during Late Miocene to Pliocene time, older rocks were intensely faulted and sheared. contains the lowest dry point in North America. Mostly thick-bedded arid massive dark-colored dolomite, thin-bedded limestone member 500 feet thick 1 000 feet below top of formation, 2 brown-weathering shaIy units, upper one fossiliferous, about 200 arid 500 feet, respectively, below thin-bedded member. Regional topography of western North America, showing location of Death Valley and tectonic domains. Dolomites - Wikipedia Two hours after sundown, walk 30 minutes into the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes outside Stovepipe Wells. Following a right-hand bend and broader left turn, the canyon further constricts at 1.25 miles, forming orange- and gray-tinted narrows. This correlation implies 2555 km of post-eruption offset between the two locations, the distance depending on details of how the intervening faults are restored (McKenna and Hodges, 1990). 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 detachment fault in the Black Mountains is known as the Amargosa detachment (Wright et al., 1974). The Panamint Range is more symmetric, with perhaps a slightly steeper western flank. No fossils reported During periods of heavy rain, water washes down from nearby mountain slopes onto the playa, forming a shallow, short-lived lake. Limestone beds contain ooids, oncoids, and are stromatolitic. It takes some time for waves to gnaw away terraces like the ones seen on Shoreline Butte, so these benches provide records of times when the lake level stabilized long enough for waves to leave their mark on the rock. Ordovician b. Thick-bedded, fine-grained, and even-grained dolomite, mostly light color. Reviews. 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). This is the greatest topographic relief in the conterminous U.S. 48 Hours in Death Valley National Park - bemytravelmuse.com Rainstorm Member contains mixed clastic and carbonate units, and the "Johnnie oolite", a distinctive grayish-orange ooid-bearing dolomite unit in the lower part of the member. CA Death Valley is currently building a rock collection of the parks stratigraphy. This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Park Service. Hamilton (1988) examined the structures at Hanaupah Canyon and correlated this Hanaupah detachment (Hamilton's more appropriate term; HD, Fig. Deposition of these formations initiated near the end of events associated with Basin and Range extension, starting with the predominantly volcanic Artist Drive Formation (Greene, 1997). This two-stage structural evolution of extensional faulting followed by strike slip is also seen in the Panamint Valley (Andrew and Walker, 2009) and, north of the Inyo Range, in the White Mountains (Stockli et al., 2003) and central Walker Lane belt (Oldow et al., 2008). 4. 27 Eureka Quartzite 23 Tin Mountain Limestone The other period of interruption occurred between 350 and 250 Ma when sporadic pulses of mud swept southward into the Death Valley region during the erosion of highlands in north-central Nevada. Nearly black to grayish-yellow dolomite; some chert nodules; base marked by brownish-weathering shaly and cherty limestone and dolomite; incipiently to highly contact metamorphosed. 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). Here, detachment faults that dip to the west, like the Emigrant fault at Tucki Mountain, have been mapped by Cichanski (2000). Search for other works by this author on: This site uses cookies. (1999) relate this fault system to the pull-apart fault system that Burchfiel and Stewart (1966) postulated in their model for formation of Death Valley. This set of narrows is only about a quarter mile in on foot. Tucki Mountain at the north end of the range (Fig. Also, crinoidal columnals, fragments of cephalopods, and gastropods have been found from the Ash Meadow area. (2003) found two main phases of tectonism. This page is not available in other languages. Mississippian 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. These volcanics were deposited partly on the exhumed detachment surface from the earlier phase of Basin and Range extension. Ordovician Rocks now in the crest of the range were metamorphosed to greenschist facies, representing 10 km burial, in the Jurassic, with retrograde metamorphism associated with granitic intrusions in the Cretaceous (Labotka and Albee, 1990). Toward the end of this episode of tectonic denudation, deposition of the predominantly volcanic Artist Drive Formation began. 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). (Blair and Raynolds, 1999); (4) although there are angular unconformities within these formations, there are no data such as progressive tilt (Snow and Lux, 1999) to suggest that they were deposited in active grabens. 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. Unnamed limestone formation, 725 feet thick, consists of interbedded chert and limestone in thin beds and in about equal proportions. 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. The change from Basin and Range extension to strike slip between 8 and 3 Ma seen in the Death Valley region is very close to age ranges of changes in similar tectonic settings seen in several other localities in the ECSZ (Stockli et al., 2003; Faulds et al., 2005; Oldow et al., 2008; Lee et al., 2009; Andrew and Walker, 2009). [13][14][15][16] National Park Service rangers will sometimes remove a number of teakettles when there are too many. Geology of the Death Valley area, from Workman et al. Cross section across the Panamint Range near Aguereberry Point and Trail Canyon, profile B in location maps Figures 4 and 5. At some locations, such as in the Spring Mountains, has sandy carbonate beds and collophane nodules, and in Panamint Range area, lower part contains mostly silty and sandy dolomite, argillaceous quarzite, and minor shale. Massive black dolomite, 400-800 feet thick. This surface tracks over the top of the Panamint Range, with extensional allochthons consisting of an Early Paleozoic section perched on the eastern flank of the range. Figure 6 is a cross section constructed from the data in Figures 2 and 4, approximately along the line illustrated by Hunt and Mabey (1966), profile A in Figures 4 and 5. Figure 3 is a tectonostratigraphic chart showing a compilation of Neogene geologic events in the Death Valley region. 1 and 2; Miller and Pavlis, 2005). (2000). Plant life includes common reeds, bulrush and saltgrass. It lies underneath the extensional allochthons on the east side of the range, surfacing along the west side of these allochthons in the east-dipping Harrisburg fault zone mapped by Hodges et al. At Tucki Mountain, the detachment tracks over the top of the anticline that forms Tucki Mountain (Fig. 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. 108). It is an endorheic basin that can form a lake after heavy rain. b. Dips of the Paleozoic strata at the eastern end of the section are from Hunt and Mabey (1966), as is the location of the detachment below these strata; Figure 7 is a summary of stratigraphic nomenclature for these older sediments. Late Miocene (12 Ma), 8 Copper Canyon Formation (1988a), and Snow and Wernicke (2000). Pressure and heat transformed the stone into the metamorphic rock we call marble. Death Valley is located in three partly overlapping structural provinces (Fig. This desert butte was once an island in a lake that filled Death Valley several times during the Pleistocene ice ages. Recaptaculites, echinoderm plates and oncolitic algae (?) Extension in Death Valley is usually interpreted as a combination of low-angle Basin and Rangestyle extension and strike slip associated with the developing Pacific-North America plate boundary in western North America, with these two tectonic regimes operating synchronously in Death Valley. 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. 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. Cichanski (2000) mapped the southern portion of the range front and found generally low-angle faults (dips 1534), with indications that these fault surfaces have been cut by steeper faults, but the vertical offset on these faults is minor.
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