1.
Manzanar
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Located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in Californias Owens Valley between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, it is approximately 230 miles north of Los Angeles. Long before the first incarcerees arrived in March 1942, Manzanar was home to Native Americans, ranchers and miners formally established the town of Manzanar in 1910, but abandoned the town by 1929 after the City of Los Angeles purchased the water rights to virtually the entire area. As different as these groups were, their histories displayed a common thread of forced relocation, the primary focus is the Japanese American incarceration era, as specified in the legislation that created the Manzanar National Historic Site. The site also interprets the former town of Manzanar, the days, the settlement by the Owens Valley Paiute. Let us review the main points of the debate, over 120,000 residents of the U. S. A. two thirds of whom were American citizens, were incarcerated under armed guard. There were no crimes committed, no trials, and no convictions, to detain American citizens in a site under armed guard surely constitutes a concentration camp. But what were the used by the government officials who were involved in the process. Raymond Okamura provides us with a detailed list of terms, lets consider three such euphemisms, evacuation, relocation, and non-aliens. Earthquake and flood victims are evacuated and relocated, the words refer to moving people in order to rescue and protect them from danger. The official government policy makers consistently used evacuation to refer to the removal of the Japanese Americans. These are euphemisms as the terms do not imply forced removal nor incarceration in enclosures patrolled by armed guards. Hirabayashi went on to describe the harm done by the use of such euphemisms, the harm in continuing to use the governments euphemisms is that it disguises or softens the reality which subsequently has been legally recognized as a grave error. The actions abrogated some fundamental principles underlying the Constitution, the document under which we govern ourselves. This erosion of fundamental rights has consequences for all citizens of our society, some have argued that the Nazi Germany camps during the Holocaust were concentration camps and to refer to the Japanese American camps likewise would be an affront to the Jews. It is certainly true that the Japanese Americans did not suffer the fate of the Jews in the terrible concentration camps or death camps where Nazi Germany practiced a policy of genocide. Although the loss of life was minimal in Americas concentration camps, michi and Walter Weglyns research concerning Nazi Germanys euphemisms for their concentration camps revealed such phrases as protective custody camps, reception centers, and transit camps. Ironically, two Nazi euphemisms were identical to our governments usage, assembly centers and relocation centers and it might be well to point out, also, that the Nazis were not operating under the U. S. Constitution. Comparisons usually neglect to point out that Hitler was operating under the rules of the Third Reich
2.
Owens Valley
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The mountain peaks on either side reach above 14,000 feet in elevation, while the floor of the Owens Valley is at 4,000 feet, making the valley one of the deepest in the United States. The Sierra Nevada casts the valley in a shadow, which makes Owens Valley the Land of Little Rain. The bed of Owens Lake, now a predominantly dry endorheic alkali flat and these episodes inspired aspects of the film Chinatown. Towns in the Owens Valley include Bishop, Lone Pine, Independence, the major road in the valley is U. S. Route 395. Owens Valley is a graben—a downdropped block of land between two vertical faults, Owens Valley is the westernmost graben in the Basin and Range Province. It is also part of a trough which extends from Oregon to Death Valley called the Walker Lane, the western flank of much of the valley has large moraines coming off the Sierra Nevada. These unsorted piles of rock, boulders, and dust were pushed to where they are by glaciers during the last ice age, an excellent example of a moraine is on State Route 168 as it climbs into Buttermilk Country. This graben was formed by a series of earthquakes, such as the 1872 Lone Pine earthquake. The topmost part of this escarpment is exposed at Alabama Hills, the Owens Valley is also part of the Long Valley Caldera, a super-volcano that last erupted 260,000 years ago. It is filled with many mini-volcanoes, which look like hills, see also, Inyo and Mono Craters. Smaller versions of the Devils Postpile, can be found, for example, the valley contains plants adapted to alkali flat habitat. One of these, the Owens Valley checkerbloom, is endemic to Owens Valley, the valley was inhabited in late prehistoric times by the Timbisha in the extreme south end around Owens Lake and by the Mono tribe in the central and northern portions of the valley. The Timbisha speak the Timbisha language, classified in the Numic branch of Uto-Aztecan language family, the closest related languages are Shoshoni and Comanche. The Eastern Mono speak a dialect of the Mono language which is also Numic, the Timbisha presently live in Death Valley at Furnace Creek although most families also have summer homes in the Lone Pine colony. The Eastern Mono live in colonies from Lone Pine to Bishop. Trade between Native Americans of the Owens Valley between coastal tribes such as the Chumash has been indicated by the archaeological record, on May 1,1834, Joseph R. Walker entered Owens Valley at the mouth of Walker Pass. He and his group of 52 men traveled up the valley on their way back to the Humboldt Sink, fremont named the Owens valley, river and lake for Richard Owens, one of his guides. Camp Independence was established on Oak Creek nearby modern Independence, California, on July 4,1862, from 1942 to 1945 during World War II, the first Japanese American Internment camp operated in the valley at Manzanar near Independence, California
3.
Summit
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A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a maximum in elevation. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak, and zenith are synonymous, the UIAA definition is that a summit is independent if it has a prominence of 30 metres or more, it is a mountain if it has a prominence of at least 300 metres. This can be summarised as follows, A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top, Summit may also refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route. In many parts of the western United States, the term refers to the highest point along a road, highway. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit while the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit, geoid Hill List of highest mountains Maxima and minima Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder
4.
Topographic isolation
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The topographic isolation of a summit is the minimum great-circle distance to a point of equal elevation, representing a radius of dominance in which the peak is the highest point. It can be calculated for small hills and islands as well as for major mountain peaks, the following sortable table lists the Earths 40 most topographically isolated summits. The nearest peak to Germanys highest mountain, the 2, 962-metre-high Zugspitze, the distance between the Zugspitze and this contour is 25.8 km, the Zugspitze is thus the highest peak for a radius of 25.8 km around. Its isolation is thus 25.8 km, because there are no higher mountains than Mount Everest, it has no definitive isolation. Many sources list its isolation as the circumference of the earth over the poles or – questionably, after Mount Everest the Aconcagua, highest mountain of the American continents, has the greatest isolation of all mountains. There is no land for 16,534 kilometres when its height is first exceeded by Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush. Mont Blanc is the highest mountain of the Alps, the geographically nearest higher mountains are all in the Caucasus. The Kukurtlu, which rises near the Elbrus, is the peak for Mont Blanc. com Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia peakbagger. com peaklist. org peakware. com World Mountain Encyclopedia summitpost. org
5.
Mount Whitney
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Mount Whitney is the highest summit in the contiguous United States and the Sierra Nevada, with an elevation of 14,505 feet. The west slope of the mountain is in Sequoia National Park, the east slope is in the Inyo National Forest in Inyo County. The summit of Whitney is on the Sierra Crest and the Great Basin Divide and it lies near many of the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada. The peak rises dramatically above the Owens Valley, sitting 10,778 feet or just over two miles above the town of Lone Pine 15 miles to the east, in the Owens Valley. It rises more gradually on the west side, lying only about 3,000 feet above the John Muir Trail at Guitar Lake, the mountain is partially dome-shaped, with its famously jagged ridges extending to the sides. Mount Whitney is above the line and has an alpine climate. Very few plants grow near the summit, one example is the Skypilot, the only animals are transient, such as the butterfly Parnassius phoebus and the gray-crowned rosy finch. The mountain is the highest point on the Great Basin Divide, waterways on the west side of the peak flow into Whitney Creek, which flows into the Kern River. The Kern River terminates in the Tulare Basin, during very wet years, water overflows from the Tulare Basin into the San Joaquin River which flows to the Pacific Ocean. From the east, water from Mount Whitney flows to Lone Pine Creek, which joins the Owens River, which in turn terminates at Owens Lake, the estimated elevation of the summit of Mount Whitney has changed over the years. The technology of elevation measurement has become refined and, more importantly. The peak was commonly said to be at 14,494 ft, an older plaque on the summit reads elevation 14,496.811 feet but this was estimated using the older vertical datum from 1929. Since then the shape of the Earth has been estimated more accurately, using a new vertical datum established in 1988 the benchmark is now estimated to be at 14,505 ft. The rise is caused by a fault system that runs along the eastern base of the Sierra. Thus, the granite that forms Mount Whitney is the same as the granite that forms the Alabama Hills, the raising of Whitney is due to the same geological forces that cause the Basin and Range Province, the crust of much of the intermontane west is slowly being stretched. The granite that forms Mount Whitney is part of the Sierra Nevada batholith, in Cretaceous time, masses of molten rock that originated from subduction rose underneath what is now Whitney and solidified underground to form large expanses of granite. In July 1864, the members of the California Geological Survey named the peak after Josiah Whitney, during the same expedition, geologist Clarence King attempted to climb Whitney from its west side, but stopped just short. In 1871, King returned to climb what he believed to be Whitney, upon learning of his mistake in 1873, King finally completed his own first ascent of Whitney, but did so a month too late to claim the first recorded ascent
6.
Mountain range
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A mountain range is a geographic area containing numerous geologically related mountains. A mountain system or system of ranges, sometimes is used to combine several geological features that are geographically related. Mountain ranges are usually segmented by highlands or mountain passes and valleys, individual mountains within the same mountain range do not necessarily have the same geologic structure or petrology. They may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terranes, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earths land surface are associated with either the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt. The Andes is 7,000 kilometres long and is considered the worlds longest mountain system. The Alpide belt includes Indonesia and southeast Asia, through the Himalaya, the belt also includes other European and Asian mountain ranges. The Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, mountain ranges outside of these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the Urals, the Appalachians, the Scandinavian Mountains, the Altai Mountains and the Hijaz Mountains. If the definition of a range is stretched to include underwater mountains. The mountain systems of the earth are characterized by a tree structure, the sub-range relationship is often expressed as a parent-child relationship. For example, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Blue Ridge Mountains are sub-ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, equivalently, the Appalachians are the parent of the White Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains, and the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains are children of the Appalachians. The position of mountains influences climate, such as rain or snow, when air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing orographic precipitation. As the air descends on the side, it warms again and is drier. Often, a shadow will affect the leeward side of a range. Mountain ranges are constantly subjected to forces which work to tear them down. Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted and long after until the mountains are reduced to low hills, rivers are traditionally believed to be the principle erosive factor on mountain ranges, with their ability of bedrock incision and sediment transport. The rugged topography of a range is the product of erosion. The basins adjacent to a mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock. The early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado provides an example and this mass of rock was removed as the range was actively undergoing uplift
