Death Valley Tour
Death Valley National Park is made up of 3,336,000 acres and contains more than 3,000,000 acres of wilderness.
The largest National park south of Alaska, Death Valley is known for extremes: It is North America’s driest and hottest spot (with fewer than two inches/five centimeters of rainfall annually and a record high of 134°F/57°C), and has the lowest elevation on the continent—282 feet (86 meters) below sea level. Even with its extremes, the park still receives nearly a million visitors each year.
In 1849 emigrants bound for California’s gold fields strayed into the 120-mile (193-kilometer) long basin, enduring a two-month ordeal of “hunger and thirst and an awful silence.” One of the last to leave looked down from a mountain at the narrow valley and said, “Good-bye, Death Valley.”
Native Americans, most recently the Shoshone, found ways to adapt to the more recent and forbidding desert conditions that exist here now. Rock art and artifacts indicate a human presence dating back at least 9,000 years.
Death Valley Tour Pictures
