Furnace Creek, California
Furnace Creek is a census-designated place in Inyo County, California. The population was 24 at the 2010 census, down from 31 at the 2000 census; the elevation of the village is 190 feet below sea level. Furnace Creek holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth at 134 °F on July 10, 1913, as well as the highest recorded natural ground surface temperature on Earth at 201 °F on July 15, 1972; the visitor center and headquarters of the Death Valley National Park are located at Furnace Creek. The village is surrounded by a number of Park Service public campgrounds. Two of the Park's major tourist facilities, the Inn at Death Valley and Ranch at Death Valley, are located here; the Furnace Creek Golf Course attached to the Ranch claims to be the lowest in the world, at 214 feet below sea level. Some of the lodging is closed in the summer, when temperatures can surpass 125 °F, but the golf course remains open. There are a restaurant, cafe and gas station in Furnace Creek village.
The Furnace Creek Airport is located about 0.75 miles west of the park headquarters. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 31.5 square miles, over 99% of it being land. Springs in the Amargosa Range created a natural oasis at Furnace Creek, which has subsequently dwindled due to diversion of this water to support the village. From 1911 through 2006, Furnace Creek had an average high temperature of 91.4 °F and an average low temperature of 62.9 °F. During that time period, the hottest month was July with an average daily high temperature of 116.5 °F and the driest month was June with an average monthly precipitation of 0.05 in. Furnace Creek holds the record for the highest recorded temperature in the world, reaching 134 °F on July 10, 1913; some meteorologists dispute the accuracy of the 1913 temperature measurement. In addition, a ground temperature of 201 °F was recorded in Furnace Creek on July 15, 1972; the Timbisha inhabited. Greenland Ranch was established by the William Tell Coleman Borax Company in 1883.
It was named after the green alfalfa fields planted at the location. A weather station was established at the ranch in 1891. Greenland Ranch was renamed Furnace Creek Ranch in 1933; the Timbisha tribe live at their Death Valley Indian Community reservation here. The Timbisha people provided many of the artisans and builders to construct the original Fred Harvey Company resort buildings, the Indian Village, Park Service structures, they were one of the first tribes to secure tribal status through the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Federal Acknowledgment Process. In present times, as the federally recognized Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California, they compose the majority of residents of Furnace Creek's permanent population at the tribe's reservation, the "Death Valley Indian Community."Furnace Creek was the center of Death Valley mining and operations for the Pacific Coast Borax Company and the historic 20 Mule Teams hauling wagon trains of borax across the Mojave Desert. On the afternoon of July 10, 1913, a temperature of 134 °F was recorded at Greenland Ranch.
This temperature stands as the highest ambient air temperature recorded at the surface of the Earth. The 2010 United States Census reported that Furnace Creek had a population of 24; the population density was 0.8 people per square mile. The racial makeup of Furnace Creek was 16 Native American and two from two or more races; the Census reported that 24 people lived in households. There were 15 households, out of which two had children under the age of 18 living in them, four were opposite-sex married couples living together, four had a female householder with no husband present. Eight households were made up of individuals and three had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older; the average household size was 1.60. There were seven families; the population comprised two people under the age of 18, two people aged 18 to 24, five people aged 25 to 44, nine people aged 45 to 64, six people who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 52.0 years. There were 15 occupied housing units at an average density of 0.6 per square mile, of which 11 were owner-occupied, four were occupied by renters.
The homeowner vacancy rate was 0%. 19 people lived in owner-occupied housing units and five people lived in rental housing units. As of the census of 2000, there were 31 people, 15 households, 9 families residing in the CDP; the population density was 1.0 persons per square mile. There were 18 housing units at an average density of 0.6 per square mile. There were 25 Native Americans. There were 15 households out of which four had children under the age of 18 living with them, five were married couples living together, three had a female householder with no husband present, six were non-families. Six of the households were made up of individuals and two had so
Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California—Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley, most of Saline Valley; the park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, valleys and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the lower 48 states, the hottest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States; the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere is in Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level. 91% of the park is a designated wilderness area. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment; some examples include creosote bush, bighorn sheep and the Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.
A series of Native American groups inhabited the area from as early as 7000 BC, most the Timbisha around 1000 AD who migrated between winter camps in the valleys and summer grounds in the mountains. A group of European-Americans, trapped in the valley in 1849 while looking for a shortcut to the gold fields of California, gave the valley its name though only one of their group died there. Several short-lived boom towns sprang up during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to mine gold and silver; the only long-term profitable ore to be mined was borax, transported out of the valley with twenty-mule teams. The valley became the subject of books, radio programs, television series, movies. Tourism expanded in the 1920s when resorts were built around Furnace Creek. Death Valley National Monument was declared in 1933 and the park was expanded and became a national park in 1994; the natural environment of the area has been shaped by its geology. The valley is a graben with the oldest rocks being extensively metamorphosed and at least 1.7 billion years old.
Ancient, shallow seas deposited marine sediments until rifting opened the Pacific Ocean. Additional sedimentation occurred; the subduction created a line of volcanoes. The crust started to pull apart, creating the current Basin and Range landform. Valleys filled with sediment and, during the wet times of glacial periods, with lakes, such as Lake Manly. In 2013, Death Valley National Park was designated as a dark sky park by the International Dark-Sky Association. There are two major valleys in Death Valley and Panamint Valley. Both of these valleys were formed within the last few million years and both are bounded by north–south-trending mountain ranges; these and adjacent valleys follow the general trend of Basin and Range topography with one modification: there are parallel strike-slip faults that perpendicularly bound the central extent of Death Valley. The result of this shearing action is additional extension in the central part of Death Valley which causes a slight widening and more subsidence there.
Uplift of surrounding mountain ranges and subsidence of the valley floor are both occurring. The uplift on the Black Mountains is so fast that the alluvial fans there are small and steep compared to the huge alluvial fans coming off the Panamint Range. Fast uplift of a mountain range in an arid environment does not allow its canyons enough time to cut a classic V-shape all the way down to the stream bed. Instead, a V-shape ends at a slot canyon halfway down, forming a'wine glass canyon.' Sediment is deposited on a steep alluvial fan. At 282 feet below sea level at its lowest point, Badwater Basin on Death Valley's floor is the second-lowest depression in the Western Hemisphere, while Mount Whitney, only 85 miles to the west, rises to 14,505 feet; this topographic relief is the greatest elevation gradient in the contiguous United States and is the terminus point of the Great Basin's southwestern drainage. Although the extreme lack of water in the Great Basin makes this distinction of little current practical use, it does mean that in wetter times the lake that once filled Death Valley was the last stop for water flowing in the region, meaning the water there was saturated in dissolved materials.
Thus the salt pans in Death Valley are among the largest in the world and are rich in minerals, such as borax and various salts and hydrates. The largest salt pan in the park extends 40 miles from the Ashford Mill Site to the Salt Creek Hills, covering some 200 square miles of the valley floor; the best known playa in the park is the Racetrack, known for its moving rocks. Death Valley is the hottest and driest place in North America due to its lack of surface water and low relief, it is so the hottest spot in the United States that many tabulations of the highest daily temperatures in the country omit Death Valley as a matter of course. On the afternoon of July 10, 1913, the United States Weather Bureau recorded a high temperature of 134 °F at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley; this temperature stands as the highest ambient air temperature recorded at the surface of the Earth. Daily summer temperatures of 120 °F or greater are common, as well as below freezing nightly temperatur
Black Mountains (California)
The Black Mountains are a mountain range located in the southeastern part of Inyo County, within southeastern Death Valley National Park. The Black Mountains are a southern range of the Amargosa Range System, lie in a north-south direction at their southwestern end, their formation has been classified as the Amargosa Chaos. Lower Death Valley lies to the west & southwest of the Black Mountains section, with Greenwater Valley and the Greenwater Range to the northeast; the Black Mountains and Greenwater Range abut the Funeral Mountains on the north at the southern terminus of the Amargosa Range. The Amargosa River turns south-southwest, around the three sub-ranges northwest into Death Valley; the Owlshead Mountains are to the south across the Amargosa River and its steep descent into Death Valley. FeaturesThe range reaches an elevation of 6,384 feet above sea level at Funeral Peak. Dante's View and Coffin Peak lie at the northern end of the range; the Amargosa Desert is The Lila C Mine, of "The Borax King" Francis Marion Smith and his Pacific Coast Borax Company, was developed to mine borax just east of the range.
Around 1914 he built the Death Valley Railroad to serve the newer Ryan C. Mine above it within the Black Mountains, with a spur to the Lila C. tracks Gower Gulch Death Valley Mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert Allan, Stuart. California Road and Recreation Atlas. Benchmark Maps. p. 88. ISBN 0-929591-80-1. Media related to Black Mountains at Wikimedia Commons
Mineral
A mineral is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound that occurs in pure form. A rock may consist of a single mineral, or may be an aggregate of two or more different minerals, spacially segregated into distinct phases. Compounds that occur only in living beings are excluded, but some minerals are biogenic and/or are organic compounds in the sense of chemistry. Moreover, living beings synthesize inorganic minerals that occur in rocks. In geology and mineralogy, the term "mineral" is reserved for mineral species: crystalline compounds with a well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure. Minerals without a definite crystalline structure, such as opal or obsidian, are more properly called mineraloids. If a chemical compound may occur with different crystal structures, each structure is considered different mineral species. Thus, for example and stishovite are two different minerals consisting of the same compound, silicon dioxide; the International Mineralogical Association is the world's premier standard body for the definition and nomenclature of mineral species.
As of November 2018, the IMA recognizes 5,413 official mineral species. Out of more than 5,500 proposed or traditional ones; the chemical composition of a named mineral species may vary somewhat by the inclusion of small amounts of impurities. Specific varieties of a species sometimes have official names of their own. For example, amethyst is a purple variety of the mineral species quartz; some mineral species can have variable proportions of two or more chemical elements that occupy equivalent positions in the mineral's structure. Sometimes a mineral with variable composition is split into separate species, more or less arbitrarily, forming a mineral group. Besides the essential chemical composition and crystal structure, the description of a mineral species includes its common physical properties such as habit, lustre, colour, tenacity, fracture, specific gravity, fluorescence, radioactivity, as well as its taste or smell and its reaction to acid. Minerals are classified by key chemical constituents.
Silicate minerals comprise 90% of the Earth's crust. Other important mineral groups include the native elements, oxides, carbonates and phosphates. One definition of a mineral encompasses the following criteria: Formed by a natural process. Stable or metastable at room temperature. In the simplest sense, this means. Classical examples of exceptions to this rule include native mercury, which crystallizes at −39 °C, water ice, solid only below 0 °C. Modern advances have included extensive study of liquid crystals, which extensively involve mineralogy. Represented by a chemical formula. Minerals are chemical compounds, as such they can be described by fixed or a variable formula. Many mineral groups and species are composed of a solid solution. For example, the olivine group is described by the variable formula 2SiO4, a solid solution of two end-member species, magnesium-rich forsterite and iron-rich fayalite, which are described by a fixed chemical formula. Mineral species themselves could have a variable composition, such as the sulfide mackinawite, 9S8, a ferrous sulfide, but has a significant nickel impurity, reflected in its formula.
Ordered atomic arrangement. This means crystalline. An ordered atomic arrangement gives rise to a variety of macroscopic physical properties, such as crystal form and cleavage. There have been several recent proposals to classify amorphous substances as minerals; the formal definition of a mineral approved by the IMA in 1995: "A mineral is an element or chemical compound, crystalline and, formed as a result of geological processes." Abiogenic. Biogenic substances are explicitly excluded by the IMA: "Biogenic substances are chemical compounds produced by biological processes without a geological component and are not regarded as minerals. However, if geological processes were involved in the genesis of the compound the product can be accepted as a mineral."The first three general characteristics are less debated than the last two. Mineral classification schemes and their definitions are evolving to match recent advances in mineral science. Recent changes have included the addition of an organic class, in both the new Dana and the Strunz classification schemes.
The organic class includes a rare group of minerals with hydrocarbons. The IMA Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names adopted in 2009 a hierarchical scheme for the naming and classification of mineral groups and group names and established seven commissions and four working groups to review and classify minerals into an official listing of their published names. According to these new r
Chloride City, California
Chloride City is a ghost town in Inyo County, United States. It is located 8.5 miles north-northeast of Beatty Junction, at an elevation of 4,770 ft. The former settlement is now in Death Valley National Park; the town was established in 1905 when the Bullfrog, gold discovery brought people into the area. The ghost town contains numerous adits and the grave of James McKay, of whom nothing is known; the town holds the remains of three stamp mills. List of ghost towns in California
Flora
Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time the occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animal life is fauna. Flora and other forms of life such as fungi are collectively referred to as biota. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are referred to as flora, as in the terms gut flora or skin flora; the word "flora" comes from the Latin name of Flora, the goddess of plants and fertility in Roman mythology. The technical term "flora" is derived from a metonymy of this goddess at the end of the sixteenth century, it was first used in poetry to denote the natural vegetation of an area, but soon assumed the meaning of a work cataloguing such vegetation. Moreover, "Flora" was used to refer to the flowers of an artificial garden in the seventeenth century; the distinction between vegetation and flora was first made by Jules Thurmann. Prior to this, the two terms were used indiscriminately. Plants are grouped into floras based on region, special environment, or climate.
Regions can be distinct habitats like mountain vs. flatland. Floras can mean plant life of a historic era as in fossil flora. Lastly, floras may be subdivided by special environments: Native flora; the native and indigenous flora of an area. Agricultural and horticultural flora; the plants that are deliberately grown by humans. Weed flora. Traditionally this classification was applied to plants regarded as undesirable, studied in efforts to control or eradicate them. Today the designation is less used as a classification of plant life, since it includes three different types of plants: weedy species, invasive species, native and introduced non-weedy species that are agriculturally undesirable. Many native plants considered weeds have been shown to be beneficial or necessary to various ecosystems; the flora of a particular area or time period can be documented in a publication known as a "flora". Floras may require specialist botanical knowledge to use with any effectiveness. Traditionally they are books.
Simon Paulli's Flora Danica of 1648 is the first book titled "Flora" to refer to the plant world of a certain region. It describes medicinal plants growing in Denmark; the Flora Sinensis by the Polish Jesuit Michał Boym is another early example of a book titled "Flora". However, despite its title it covered not only plants, but some animals of the region, China and India. A published flora contains diagnostic keys; these are dichotomous keys, which require the user to examine a plant, decide which one of two alternatives given best applies to the plant. Biome — a major regional group of distinctive plant and animal communities Fauna Fauna and Flora Preservation Society Herbal Horticultural flora Megaflora Pharmacopoeia The Plant List Vegetation — a general term for the plant life of a regionCategoriesFlora by continent Flora by country Flora by region eFloras — a collection of on-line floras Chilebosque — checklist of Chilean native flora Flora of NW Europe with descriptions and a quiz to test your knowledge Flora of Australia Online Flora of New Zealand Series Online
Death Valley Junction, California
Death Valley Junction is a tiny Mojave Desert unincorporated community in Inyo County, California, at the intersection of SR 190 and SR 127, in the Amargosa Valley and just east of Death Valley National Park. The zip code is 92328, the elevation is 2,041 ft, the population fewer than 4; the default format for wired phone numbers in this community is 852-xxxx. Death Valley Junction is home to the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel, where resident Marta Becket staged dance and mime shows from the late 1960s until her last show in February 2012. Becket died in 2017; the hotel is still operating next to the opera house, but beyond these maintained areas, the town is in a state of disrepair. There is no gas station, only one restaurant, the Amargosa Cafe; the town is owned by the non-profit Amargosa Opera House Inc. which runs the Opera House and cafe The community's location, 27 miles east-southeast of Furnace Creek Inn, on the east side of Death Valley is south of Nevada's Amargosa Valley and near Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.
East/South East, 27 miles, is Nevada. South on SR127 is the town of California; the closest straight-line distance to the Nevada state line is five miles northeast. Government documents show an effort by the Timbisha Shoshone tribal government to acquire about 7,200 acres in the area during 1999 to 2000; this includes areas for residences and the official federal sanction to use some government lands for traditional ceremonies. In 2017 the tribe constructed a cannabis grow facility on the land; the town was created in 1907 when the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad was constructed through the Amargosa Valley and a spur from their main line was built to the Lila C. borax mine in the hills to the west. The town was owned by Robert Tubb, who operated a saloon and brothel; the town first appears on the 1910 Furnace Creek Quandrangle USGS topographic map. In 1914, the Death Valley Railroad started operating between Ryan and Death Valley Junction, it carried borax until 1928. From 1923 to 1925 the Pacific Coast Borax Company constructed buildings in the town, hiring architect Alexander Hamilton McCulloch to design a Spanish Colonial Revival whistle stop centered at the hotel and office complex building, now known as the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel.
The town began to decline in the mid-20th century. However, in 1967 dancer and actress Marta Becket happened to visit due to an automobile repair, she became enamored with the theater, with help from benefactors, she leased purchased, the hotel and theater complex. The Death Valley post office opened in 1908 and transferred to Furnace Creek Ranch in 1961; the Amargosa post office opened in 1962, changed its name to Death Valley Junction in 1968. In 1980 the town was included in the National Register of Historic Places as the "Death Valley Junction Historic District." When the Death Valley Railroad was established in 1914, it used 3.19 miles of tracks belonging to the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad east-southeast of Death Valley Junction to Horton. Local wired telephones were manual telephone service until the 1980s. To reach a phone in Death Valley Junction when the area was under manual service required dialing the operator and asking for "Death Valley Junction, Toll Station". Placing an outbound call required lifting the receiver and waiting for an operator.
The operator who answered was in Los Angeles. Death Valley Junction is now in area codes 442 and 760. In the state legislature, Death Valley Junction is in the 18th Senate District, represented by Democrat Robert Hertzberg, the 26th Assembly District, represented by Republican Devon Mathis. Federally, Death Valley Junction is in California's 8th congressional district, represented by Republican Paul Cook. "Shotgun" Kitty Tubb - wife of the original owner of the town, Robert Tubb Marta Becket - retired actress, dancer and painter Harry Rosenberg - engineer, instrumental in creating useful alloys of titanium The town that Zane Grey helped build The Amargosa Opera House and Hotel Ghost Towns of Death Valley: Death Valley Junction
United States
California
