3 Ma, deposition of a thick sequence of volcanics, clastics, and some lacustrine carbonates signaled a period of relative tectonic quiescence, with sediments in some areas covering the exhumed detachment surfaces. occur in this formation at Dolomite Canyon. Geosphere 2011;; 7 (1): 171182. Scarce fossils. Hamilton (1988) examined the structures at Hanaupah Canyon and correlated this Hanaupah detachment (Hamilton's more appropriate term; HD, Fig. In some places the dolomite has transformed into marble by heat . Erosion over the millennia since the eruption revealed multi-colored stripes on the crater walls dating to the Miocene. The Inyo Mountains, south of the White Mountains, are bounded to the east by the East Inyo fault zone, which links via the Hunter Mountain fault to the Panamint Valley. (2005) for the UbehebeLake Rogers Formation (U-LR), also in the Cottonwoods area, and from Snow and Lux (1999) for the Bat Mountain Formation. Formed of steep cliffs, it is composed of red colored oxidized rocks and is visible from Zabriskie point and the Golden Canyon trail. Dates. b. Figure 10A, Present day, shows the geometry of the Basin and Range detachment surface. Except for two partially collapsed stone structures, little evidence remains of human habitation at the spring. 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. 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. 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. Detachment fault surfaces are exposed in several places in the Death Valley region, with the best studied being the antiformal structures known as turtlebacks in the Black Mountains on the east side of the valley (Figs. East of Death Valley, the Tecopa Basin (TB, Fig. The ProterozoicCambrian boundary is within the Wood Canyon Formation (Corsetti and Hagadorn, 2000). South of Mormon Point, another important data point for structural evolution is in the Confidence Hills (CH, Fig. Using this very rough estimate of 1.81 Ma (base of Quaternary) for a third of the section and assuming a constant sedimentation rate, the base of the section would be at 5.4 Ma. Contact with overlying Bonanza King Formation is commonly marked by a change from slope-forming yellowish-weathering limestone of the Carrara to more massive cliff-forming limestone and dolomite of the Bonanza King formation. 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. The upper part of this limestone is highly fossiliferous and characterized by the corals Syringopora and Zaphrentites. At Tucki Mountain, the detachment tracks over the top of the anticline that forms Tucki Mountain (Fig. The primary source of the dune sands is probably the Cottonwood Mountains which lie to the north and northwest. The Badwater Basin is a salt flat adjacent to the Black Mountains that descends to the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet (86m)[4] below sea level. Hells Gate is a point of interest located in Death Valley National Park, at the intersection of Daylight Pass Road and Beatty Road. Cambrian Areas below sea level are in blue. Half-day Tours. Massive black dolomite, 400-800 feet thick. The rocks on its exposed and barren ridge are famous for being shaped by wind erosion and are called ventifacts. By far the largest national park in the contiguous United States, more than 90% of Death Valley's 3.3 million acres are protected as a designated Wilderness Area. Their cross section across Tucki Mountain nevertheless remains a classic illustration of the geometry of a core complex. Unit is 580 m to 1,700 m thick in the NTS area, about 1,000 m thick in the Cottonwood Mountains, 1,150 to 1,350 m thick in the Montgomery Mountains and Nopah Range respectively, about 610 m thick in the norther Last Chance Range, 445 to 900 m thick in the Spring Mountains and southern Sheep Range, and reaches a maximum thickness of 1,633 m in the Groom Range area, Lincoln County. 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. This interpretation is similar to one shown by Hunt and Mabey (1996) in a cross section near Hanaupah Canyon (their fig. Death Valley National Park is one of many units within the National Park service established because of its underlying geologic theme. Most of the so-called 'sailing stones' are from a nearby high hillside of dark dolomite on the south end of the playa. Unit is 30 to 350 m thick in the NTS area, 70 m thick in the Montgomery Mountains, 106 m thick in the Dry Mountain area, Cottonwood Mountains. Tin Mountain Limestone 1000 feet thick, is black with thin-bedded lower member and thick-bedded upper member. a. Interbedded fluvial and marine sequences fine-grained, cross-stratified, locally conglomeratic sandstone, intervals of siltstone and carbonate rocks in the Funeral Mnts. c. White, pink, and red orthoquartzite; laminated to thick-bedded, commonly cross-bedded, and well cemented; has skolithos. Devonian-Silurian 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. Medium grained leucocratic granodiorite consisting of sodic plagioclase, quartz, microcline, and muscovite; locally, a minor amount of biotite and a trace of garnet are observed. 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. Scarce fossils. This unfortunate thrust fault term was used by Hunt and Mabey, even though they recognized the extensional origin of the younger-over-older structural relationship at Tucki Mountain (Hunt and Mabey, 1966, p. A99). Tucki Mountain at the north end of the range (Fig. 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. It should be noted that 3 formations have been given unofficial names: Warm Spring Granite, Skidoo Granite, and Strozzis Ranch Rhyolite. 18 Owens Valley Formation Seismic reflection data (Louie et al., 1992) show 140 m of flat-lying section below the 5.12 Ma basalts, this section lying unconformably on tilted and faulted sediments. Events associated with Basin and Range extension occurred in the Miocene to very early Pliocene. Cross section across the Panamint Range near Aguereberry Point and Trail Canyon, profile B in location maps Figures 4 and 5. Vegetation in the area is sparse, largely confined to hearty sagebrush. 4), on the flanks of the Black Mountains, the Copper Canyon formation preserves 1800 m of mostly fluvial to lacustrine sediments, including some distinctive tufa mounds (Nyborg and Buchheim, 2009). No fossils. 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). Blakely et al. There is no apparent reason for these rocks to be in the footwall of the detachment at Tucki Mountain and in the hanging wall further south along the range, as they would need to be if the entire Panamint Range is allochthonous. There does not appear to be a high-angle fault along the west side of the Panamints. This phase of deformation coincided with severe crustal stretching that created the deep valleys and high mountains of this part of the Basin and Range Province. Dashed line shows inferred location of the detachment fault across the Panamint Range. 35 Stirling Quartzite The Mosaic Canyon trail in Death Valley National Park is a popular hike up a narrow, . The canyons of Death Valley National Park are justly famous for their geologic complexity and beauty, and Mosaic Canyon is one of the most beautiful that you can hike on a short trip to the park. Places of interest in the Death Valley area are mostly located within Death Valley National Park in eastern California. This page is not available in other languages. [12] periodically flows at the surface. 3 Ma, these basins were uplifted in the footwall of the Black Mountains fault block, which is why they now lie high above the valley floor. This idea has been incorporated into several models for the structural evolution of Death Valley. The falls themselves support several small fern gullys. When Burchfiel and Stewart (1966) first suggested that Death Valley was formed as a pull-apart basin, little was known about timing of tectonic events in the region. c. Banded Mountain and Papoose Lake members recognizable in most parts of the map area. 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. This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Park Service. 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 Panamint Range is more symmetric, with perhaps a slightly steeper western flank. . Contained within its boundaries is a diverse rock record stretching throughout most of geologic time. 37 Noonday Dolomite 6) is an antiformal structure formed by arching of the exposed detachment surface; I suggest that this arching also forms the rest of the Panamint Range, making the entire range a core complex. Aguereberry Point /.r.br.i/[1] is a promontory and tourist viewpoint in the Panamint Range, within Death Valley National Park in Inyo County, eastern California. *deposited in marine basins during Precambrian continental rifting algal marine dolomite. 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. The ghost town of Ballarat had 400 residents at the turn of the 20th century when mines were active in the area. It should not be confused with an actual golf course in Furnace Creek, also in Death Valley. See text for details. These low hills are composed of clastic sediments of the Confidence Hills Formation (Wright and Troxel, 1984), with an age range of 1.72.2 Ma (Knott et al., 2005). Massive quartzite, with thin-bedded quartzite at base and top, 350 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. 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 depositional base of the oldest of these northern Black Mountains formations, the Artist Drive, is not seen. Tectonostratigraphic chart for the Death Valley area. A poorly preserved brachiopod assemblage has been found. 4. 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). When the Death Valley pull-apart basin started to form ca. The Noonday Dolomite has since been tilted from uplift. Since definition of these domains, satellite geodesy (GPS) has shown that the Walker Lane belt and ECSZ are together accommodating 25% of present-day plate motion between the Pacific and North American plates (Miller et al., 2001; Hammond and Thatcher, 2007). a. Wowzers. Unit exceeds 900 m thick in the Halfpint Range, and is estimated at 2,000 m thick in the Funeral Mountains, only 600 m of unit exposed in Spring Mountains. Dokka and Travis (1990b) favored an initiation age of 106 Ma for the Mojave portion of the ECSZ. Saratoga Springs (.mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}354054N 1162525W / 35.68167N 116.42361W / 35.68167; -116.42361[11]) is a desert oasis located in southern Death Valley National Park. [8] Endemic species include the Eureka Dune Grass, the Eureka Evening Primrose and the Shining Locoweed. The Basin and Range extensional detachment tracks over the top of the range, with extensional allochthons perched on the eastern flanks of the range. 2 Playa Salt Deposits 29 Nopah Formation Interpretations of the geology of Death Valley have played an important role in the development of models of continental extension, particularly for models that incorporate large-magnitude extension accommodated by low-angle detachment faults (Wright and Troxel, 1973; Hamilton, 1988; Wernicke et al., 1988a; Snow and Wernicke, 2000; Hayman et al., 2003). Limestone beds contain ooids, oncoids, and are stromatolitic. It is intriguing that the ocean megamullion matches fairly well with the shape of the basement surface of the Badwater turtleback. 1) occurred in the Middle Miocene as a result of footwall uplift associated with east-west extension. The only fossiliferous bed is shale below limestone member neat middle of formation. Walking into Mosaic Canyon is like walking into a museum. Here, detachment faults that dip to the west, like the Emigrant fault at Tucki Mountain, have been mapped by Cichanski (2000). Breccia is an Italian word meaning gravel. 3). These recent studies indicate that strike-slip faulting and extension occurred in separate phases. DATA AND EXPLANATIONS OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN FIGURE 3, Jackson School of Geosciences, Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin, J.J. Pickle Research Campus, Bldg. Stratigraphic nomenclature for the Proterozoic and Early Paleozoic section of the Death Valley area. Plant life includes common reeds, bulrush and saltgrass. Later researchers discovered that the region had experienced substantial tension that pulled large blocks of crust apart. b. (1990) along the west side of the range, but the dip of this fault is not known. Occur in small bars and embankments; locally cemented with lime carbonate caliche. Several springs overflow into pools totaling 6.6 acres (2.7 ha) in area, making the site the third largest marsh in the park. This deformation is associated with the Southern Death Valley strike-slip fault (Dooley and McClay, 1996) and gives a qualitative indication of the large amount of post-1.7 Ma motion there has been on this fault. At ca. Cretaceous (67 Ma, 87 Ma) This older faulting is interpreted as the final phase of Basin and Range extension in the area (Louie et al., 1992; Calzia and Rm, 2000). Foraminifera and crinoid columns have also been reported from this formation. Total thickness uncertain because of faulting; estimated 2,000 feet. Dark-brown to orange burrow mottling is prevalent, and several layers have dark-brown weathering chert beds and nodules. North of Copper Canyon turtleback (CC, Fig. In this interpretation, motion was accommodated along the Amargosa detachment fault. 1. (2009) suggest that the later event at 2.8 Ma dates onset of strike-slip faulting along the Hunter Mountain fault zone and initiation of strike slip in this portion of the ECSZ. Geology of the Death Valley area, from Workman et al. (2002) and Hunt and Mabey (1966). The mountain that Dante's View is on is part of the Black Mountains which along with the parallel Panamint Range across the valley from what geologists call a horst and the valley that is called a graben. The Furnace Creek Fault runs through this part of Death Valley. Rocks in the footwall of the detachment are Late Proterozoic Pahrump Group and Johnnie Formation. Check out the dolomite promontory that gave mosaic Canyon its name, too! Permian Detachment faults (italicized): TDTucki Detachment; EFEmigrant Detachment; HFHarrisburg fault; HCHanaupah Detachment. Schematic evolution of the cross section of Figure 9. Extension along the Harrisburg fault (HF, Fig. 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. 2) and outcrop geology from Workman et al. Artist's Palette is an area on the face of the Black Mountains noted for a variety of rock colors. The cross section was made by extracting topography from the DEM data (Fig. 11 Artist Drive Formation The highest temperature in North America was recorded at Furnace Creek Ranch (134F or 57C).