California and Nevada
Death Valley National Park
Death Valley is an inhabited Indigenous homeland, an extreme basin, a mining landscape and a national park whose famous “mysteries” often have precise scientific explanations. This guide moves from Timbisha history and salt geology to borax marketing, volcanic craters, moving rocks and the deliberately theatrical myth of Scotty’s Castle.
Stories in Death Valley National Park
- Furnace Creek and Timbisha Homeland — Life Before the Park
- Badwater Basin — Salt, Water and the Lowest Point
- Zabriskie Point — Badlands Made From an Ancient Lake
- Harmony Borax Works — The Twenty-Mule-Team Myth Meets Industry
- Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes — Why the Whole Valley Is Not Dunes
- Scotty’s Castle — A Legend Built by Someone Else’s Money
- Ubehebe Crater — When Groundwater Meets Magma
- The Racetrack — The Moving Rocks Finally Caught in the Act