Total thickness of formation 1,200-1,500 feet. The Artist Drive Formation is shown by a different symbol as these rocks in their northern Black Mountains type area are primarily lava flows or volcaniclastics. Tucki Mountain at the north end of the range (Fig. The second event began while layered younger Precambrian sediments were being deposited on top of the beveled surface of older metamorphic basement rocks. 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. Running water scoured away at the fault-weakened rock, gradually carving Mosaic canyon. Dark-brown to orange burrow mottling is prevalent, and several layers have dark-brown weathering chert beds and nodules. a. Lacustrine and alluvial fan deposits found throughout the valley surface. This implies that there should be a detachment fault underneath the Panamint Range. 2) and geology from the digital map of Workman et al. CA Mostly shale, in part olive brown, in part purple. 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). Round Trip Time: 1.5 to 4.5 hours depending on route. a. 22 Perdido Formation 20 Bird Spring Formation 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. The springs were probably named in 1871 by the Wheeler Survey after the resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York, and were an important water source for the twenty-mule teams of the 1880s. Along the eastern base of the Panamint Range, between Trail and Hanaupah Canyons (TC and HC, Fig. Further south, between the Copper Canyon and Mormon Point turtlebacks, the Mormon Point Formation is also in fault contact with basement rocks, in this case the Mormon Point turtleback (Hayman, 2006; MP, Fig. Fan gravel; silt and salt buried under floor of playa; perhaps 2,000 feet thick.]. The primary source of the dune sands is probably the Cottonwood Mountains which lie to the north and northwest. Locally metamorphosed to sub-greenschist to lower greenschist facies at Bare Mountain, Funeral Mountains, and parts of the northwestern Spring Mountains. The Late Miocene intrusives consist of the mafic Willow Springs pluton and the felsic Smith Mountain granite. (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). c. White, pink, and red orthoquartzite; laminated to thick-bedded, commonly cross-bedded, and well cemented; has skolithos. Banded Mountain Member generally is light- to dark-gray, fine- to medium crystalline dolomite and limestone, alternating light- to dark-gray colors of beds give the member a distinctive banded appearance. 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). Neogene tectonic activity reported by Lee et al. The salt in the Devil's Golf Course consists of the minerals that were dissolved in the lake's water and left behind in the Badwater Basin when the lake evaporated. No fossils. Spend 4 days hiking and camping amidst the otherworldly beauty of Death Valley National Park. Blakely et al. Beds contain tabuliar-planar and trough cross bed sets, and Skolithus burrows. Unnamed limestone formation, 725 feet thick, consists of interbedded chert and limestone in thin beds and in about equal proportions. Modern geologists have documented four major deformational events that faulted and folded the Amargosa Chaos. Polished marble, chiseled dolomite, and the canyon's namesake mosaic-like fragment formations . Generally considered a moderately challenging route, it takes an average of 1 h 59 min to complete. 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]. This modified model for evolution of Death Valley suggests a strong link between timing and style of deformation in the basin with the developing Pacific-North America plate boundary, particularly eastward propagation of this boundary. Please keep in mind that collecting rocks within Death Valley is illegal without a permit! Cambrian Ninemile is light-to moderate-brown shaly siltstone and black and gray silty limestone and dolomite. Dashed line shows inferred location of the detachment fault across the Panamint Range. Figure 10 is an illustration of the evolution of Death Valley. In just a few million years, during Late Miocene to Pliocene time, older rocks were intensely faulted and sheared. a. Dark red lines in Death Valley are faults from Blakely et al. Mississippian Ordovician Early + Middle Pleistocene Smooth, polished marble walls enclose the trail as it follows the canyon's sinuous curves. Consists of conglomerates, sandstones, calcareous mudstones, algal limestones, and tuffaceous sandstones, fossil mammals include Protitanops, Mesohippus, Colodon, Teletaceras, Protoreodon, Pambromylus, and Leptomeryx found in red calcareous mudstone in the lower section of this formation. Located 1/4 mile west of Stovepipe Wells Village, the 2-mile gravel access road climbs 1000 ft. to the parking area. 2) at 15.6 Ma, followed by a period of slow uplift then renewed normal slip at 2.8 Ma. 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. b. This cross section, like Figure 6, uses topographic data from the DEM and outcrop geology from Workman et al. 1). The low-angle detachment surfaces in the latter category are normal faults linking the strike-slip faults. During periods of heavy rain, water washes down from nearby mountain slopes onto the playa, forming a shallow, short-lived lake. As also discussed earlier, the Panamint Range is a large, almost symmetric anticlinal structure, with no high-angle faults along the western side of the range. Titus Canyon is a narrow gorge in the Grapevine Mountains near the eastern boundary of Death Valley National Park. Mississippian-Pennsylvanian A hapsiphyllid tetracoral, Triplophyllites was collected immediately south of Rest Spring. Also, crinoidal columnals, fragments of cephalopods, and gastropods have been found from the Ash Meadow area. Box 579 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. Several lakes have occupied Death Valley since the close of the Pleistocene epoch 10,000 years ago, but these younger lakes were quite shallow compared to Lake Manly (See Badwater and Devils Golf Course above). Late Proterozoic sediment in the hanging wall of the detachment consists of Wood Canyon Formation. Purple polygons (Prot bsmnt) are exposures of Proterozoic basement, generally denoting detachment footwalls, from Workman et al. Fossils include brachiopods, colonial and solitary corals, gastropods, pelmatozoan ossicles, and stromatoporoids. In the second 3 Ma restoration, the topography that formed as a result of young transtensional strike slip is removed. Late Precambrian 14 Skidoo Granite 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). 2; Hodges et al., 1987; Wernicke et al., 1988b). 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). Along this profile, then, Death Valley is an asymmetric graben with a steep (50) eastern fault and less steep (30) western fault. Thickness more than 150 feet, variable because of shearing. The structural connection between the Panamint Range and Black Mountains is illustrated in Figure 9. Cambrian Based on these comparisons, I suggest that the turtlebacks are megamullions formed as a result of strike-slip faulting in Death Valley. (1999). Stromatolites occur at several localities within the limestone deposits. Syringopora have also been found. 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. These strong winds pick-up dust and sand (mostly from the two closest alluvial fans), which literally sand-blast exposed surfaces. Miocene Regional topography of western North America, showing location of Death Valley and tectonic domains. It has a width of about 10 miles (16km). Crinoid stems abundant, Including large types. 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. Hornblende quartz monzonite with variations. The latter is the trail head for the hiking trail to Telescope Peak and has views to the east down to Badwater. Previous Friday folds from Mosaic Canyon can be seen here and here and here and here. 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. Top ways to experience Golden Canyon and nearby attractions. Here, detachment faults that dip to the west, like the Emigrant fault at Tucki Mountain, have been mapped by Cichanski (2000). Unit is 50-200 m thick. ), such as Death Valley ephedra (Ephedra funerea), are spaced between them, with other xeric sub-shrubs and native bunchgrasses. Structural inferences from younger formations include: (1) two correlated outcrops of the Greenwater Formation in the Natural Bridge area are separated by a normal fault with 2000 m of throw (Greene, 1997); (2) conglomerates in the lower Furnace Creek Formation include granite boulders derived from the northwest, possibly Hunter Mountain (Hunt and Mabey, 1966; Wright et al., 1999), suggesting that the Death Valley basin did not yet exist at 5 Ma; (3) fan-deltas in the upper part of the Funeral Formation are offset 8 km by dextral strike slip along the Furnace Creek fault zone, implying this much strike slip in the last 2 m.y. Cretaceous 6). Detachment faults (italicized): TDTucki Detachment; EFEmigrant Detachment; HFHarrisburg fault; HCHanaupah Detachment. (2009), in a detailed analysis of the Inyo Mountains, report a phase of normal faulting starting at 15.6 Ma and initiation of strike-slip faulting on the Hunter Mountain fault at 2.8 Ma. Interpretations of tectonic settings in Figure 3 come from Snow and Lux (1999) for formations in the Cottonwood Mountains (Tub, Tpn, Tnv), from Knott et al. Cretaceous (67 Ma, 87 Ma) Hamilton (1988) examined the structures at Hanaupah Canyon and correlated this Hanaupah detachment (Hamilton's more appropriate term; HD, Fig. 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. At the one-mile mark, the canyon narrows for the first time to a width of roughly 40 feet across. The only fossiliferous bed is shale below limestone member neat middle of formation. Most of this formation (lower 2/3 to ) is cliff-forming, medium-dark-gray, burrow-mottled, irregularly thin-to-thick-bedded dolomite with common planar laminations; includes nodules and lenses of dark-grey to dark-brown chert. Ash beds, conglomerate, marl beds, mudstone, tephra beds. This inference is based on a compilation of age data for the Death Valley region, combined with a new interpretation of the geometry of detachment surfaces. This third event folded the layered Precambrian and Cambrian sedimentary rocks. Bedding dips are from Hunt and Mabey (1966). Typically located at the end-depositional sites in basin interiors. *2 Members* cemented fan gravel exposed at: Furnace Creek, Artist Drive, Mormon Point, and Emigrant Wash. No fossils found. 13 Strozzis Ranch Rhyolite "Tr" The area covered ranges from Kingston Peak to the southeast of Death Valley, northeast to the Southwest Nevada Volcanic Field (SWNVF), and as far west as the Darwin Plateau on the west side of Panamint Valley. Today, however, these formations all show significant structural dip, such as the 30 NE dip of the Furnace Creek Formation seen at Zabriskie Point (Greene, 1997). At Tucki Mountain, the detachment tracks over the top of the anticline that forms Tucki Mountain (Fig. First narrows of Fall Canyon 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. The Basin and Range is characterized by block faulting and, in areas of large-magnitude extension like Death Valley, by exhumation of middle and lower crustal level rocks in core complexes (Davis, 1980; Armstrong, 1982; Stewart, 1998; Dickinson, 2002). These volcanics correlate across Death Valley with the Rhodes Tuff and Sheepshead Andesite in the southern Black Mountains (TC+RT, Fig. environment three groups of stromatolites have been found in the uppermost section - lower carbonate member contains domical and branching forms of stromatolites. Recent work, especially tephrochronology (Sarna-Wojcicki et al., 2001) and argon-argon radiometric dating, has greatly increased our knowledge of the ages of these deposits. by Curtis Von Fange . Winds strong enough for sandblasting come from the north and the south. 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). The detachment fault in the Black Mountains is known as the Amargosa detachment (Wright et al., 1974). a. In the first stage, lasting from ca. This formation contains one of the best stratigraphically documented trilobite faunas in North America. Several thin limestone layers near the top of the formation at Quartz Spring are fossiliferous. Within Death Valley, the best region for slot canyons seems to be Tucki Mountain, south of Stovepipe Wells village.Here are found Grotto Canyon, Mosaic Canyon, Stretched Pebble Canyon and Little Bridge Canyon, all quite close to CA 190, though others to the south and east are much further away from the highway.These canyons typically have many short enclosed sections ending beneath a dryfall . The pull-apart concept has also been applied to the Panamint Valley, the basin on the west side of the Panamint Range, which links via the Hunter Mountain strike-slip fault northwards into Saline Valley (Burchfiel et al., 1987; Lee et al., 2009). Examination of structural, stratigraphic, and timing relationships in the region suggests that this interpretation needs revision. 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. Reviews. a. 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. From the left, the columns show the igneous events, stratigraphy, tectonic events, and regional tectonic regime. This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Park Service. See Table 1 for data and explanations of abbreviations used. Death Valley is a playground for geology enthusiasts, maybe even more like a Mecca. This part of the valley has numerous cotton top cactus, blister beetles and cholla cactus. Sharp edges of ventifacts called Kanters are formed when two or more facets (planar surfaces) intersect. When to Hike the Golden Canyon. It should be noted that 3 formations have been given unofficial names: Warm Spring Granite, Skidoo Granite, and Strozzis Ranch Rhyolite. 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. Wright et al. It is derived from the topography (Fig. A simple average of their compilation yields dimensions of 15.2 km wide by 1550 m relief. The 3 Ma restoration is shown in two phases for convenience. Natural Bridge Canyon: On the east side of the park . 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. An alternating bluish-gray limestone and thin light-gray bands of marble with fusilinids and crinoid columnals in the upper section. These data sets include digital geologic maps published by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) (Workman et al., 2002) and the California Geologic Survey (Saucedo et al., 2000), digital elevation model (DEM) topography (USGS DEM, 2009), and tectonic and sediment fill compilations (Blakely and Ponce, 2002). Total thickness Uncertain because of faulting; estimated about 3,000 feet in Panamint Range, 2,000 feet in Funeral Mountains. Shorelines of ancient Lake Manly are preserved in several parts of Death Valley, but nowhere is the record as clear as at Shoreline Butte. 23 Tin Mountain Limestone Overview. *3 Members* upper and lower members are brownish-weathering dolomite/limestone and quartzite in the middle member lower member represents high water stand deposition with carbonate intervals overlain by fluvially-dominated terrestrial braidplain and braid-delta facies of the middle member also contains Ediacaran fossils upper member represents mainly marine deposition with abundant body and trace fossils typical of the Early Cambrian such as olenellid trilobites and Skolithos tubes found in the siltstone beds, also Helicoplacoid echinoderms and brachiopod molds and casts have been found above the archaeocyathan and olenellid-bearing limestones are green siltstones containing trilobites, echinoderms, and hyoliths. 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. Syringopora (closely spaced colonies). Upper 20 to 25 m consists of slope-forming, light-olive-gray to light-grey weathering, aphanic to finely crystalline dolomite with sparse pelmatozoan fragments; contains zones of yellow-ish-gray silty dolomite; beds are locally ookitic and contain oncoids. Dashed line shows inferred location of the detachment fault across Tucki Mountain. The interpretations presented above offer some new ideas for the evolution of Death Valley. 1 Alluvial fan and lacustrine deposits This paper established a robust stratigraphy, including detailed relative stratigraphy of Neogene sediments. 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. 5 Funeral Formation This deformational event shifted the crust vertically, creating thinning and thickening of some sedimentary layers as they were being deposited. Fault dips along the southwest flanks of the turtlebacks are steep, e.g., 50 at Badwater as shown in Figure 9. In this figure, the detachment surface is shown schematically tracking across the top of the Panamint Range, rather than underneath it. b. Holocene+Pleistocene= Fan gravel; silt and salt on floor of playa, less than 100 feet thick. 27 Eureka Quartzite The depositional base of the oldest of these northern Black Mountains formations, the Artist Drive, is not seen. [2005] include the Artist Drive and Greenwater in the Furnace Creek), but these differences are not substantial to this paper. 33 Zabriskie Quartzite b. Basal unit is well-bedded quartzite above 1,650 feet thick ' shaly Unit above this 520 feet thick contains lowest olenellids in section; top unit of dolomite and quartzite 400 feet thick. A more recent drill hole near Badwater reached a total depth of 187 m (Lowenstein et al., 1999). [17], The rock at the junction includes the bedrock sandstone of the Eureka Quartzite strata.[18]. a. Skolithos) and some interbedded bioturbated silstones. With an elevation several feet above the valley floor at Badwater, the Devil's Golf Course remains dry, allowing weathering processes to sculpt the salt there into complicated formations. 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). From here an easy 1/4 mile walk leads into the canyon narrows . Scarce fossils. The NevadaCalifornia state line is labeled NV/CA. 2) and outcrop geology from Workman et al. 31 Bonanza King Formation Over time the small amount of solutes in the water accumulate to form this linear salt pan. 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. 19 Keeler Canyon Formation Ages of basalt within the succession constrain the age of the formation to between 5 and 3.3 Ma (Nyborg and Buchheim, 2009). Quartz grains are usually fine- to medium-grained. If there's a moon,. (1999) as 200 10 kA. 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. 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). A lithologic correlation with a similar conglomerate-sandstone succession at Tucki Mountain has also been used to constrain both the age and amount of extension along the Furnace Creek fault zone (Wernicke et al., 1988b). (2002; Fig. Middle third is mostly light-green quartzite and siltstone, and minor distinctive arkosic conglomerate. Although the ECSZ today accommodates 25% of Pacific-North America relative motion, timing of initiation of this shear zone is poorly known. 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 first phase, lasting from ca. This matches well with fault dips of 4554 mapped by Miller (1991) along the base of the Badwater turtleback, so it is logical to assume that the eastern flank of the basin is a high-angle fault. The northern nose of the Panamints is formed by an extensional core complex, Tucki Mountain (Hodges et al., 1987; Wernicke et al., 1988b). 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).
