Geology of the Death Valley area

The oldest rocks in the area that now includes Death Valley National Park are extensively metamorphosed by intense heat and pressure and are at least 1700 million years old.

Rifting thinned huge roughly linear parts of the supercontinent Rodinia enough to allow sea water to invade and divide its landmass into component continents separated by narrow straits.

Stretching of the crust under western North America started around 16 Ma and is thought to be caused by upwelling from the subducted spreading-zone of the Farallon Plate.

This somber, gray, almost featureless crystalline complex is composed of originally sedimentary and igneous rocks with large quantities of quartz and feldspar mixed in.

Pahrump is composed of, from oldest to youngest: Outcrops of this group can be seen in a highly metamorphosed belt that extends from the Panamint Mountains to the eastern part of the Kingston Range, including an area near the Ashford Mill site.

[2] A warm shallow sea spread over the area as the Amargosa aulacogen slowly subsided; thick sequences of lime-rich ooze with abundant colonies of algae called stromatolites were then laid down.

[3] The resulting large sequence of thick conglomerate beds of pebbles and boulders in a sandy and muddy matrix that blanketed basins between higher areas is known as the Kingston Peak Formation.

[6] A shoreline similar to the present Atlantic Ocean margin of the United States, with coastal lowlands and a wide, shallow shelf but no volcanoes, lay to the east near where Las Vegas now resides.

[10] They also contain the region's first known fossils of complex life: Ediacara fauna, trilobites, archaeocyathas, and primitive echinoderm burrows have been found in the Wood Canyon Formation.

Before tilting to their present orientation, these four formations were a continuous pile of mud and sand 3 miles (4.8 km) deep that accumulated slowly on the nearshore ocean bottom.

Erosion had so subdued nearby parts of the continent that rivers ran clear, no longer supplying abundant sand and silt to the continental shelf.

Thickest of these units is the dolomitic Bonanza King Formation, which forms the dark and light banded lower slopes of Pyramid Peak and the gorges of Titus and Grotto Canyons.

[12] An intervening period occurred in the Late Ordovician (about 450 Ma) when a sheet of quartz-rich sand blanketed a large part of the continent after the above-mentioned units were laid down.

[12] This great white band of Ordovician rock stands out on the summit of Pyramid Peak, near the Racetrack, and high on the east shoulder of Tucki Mountain.

Four formations were deposited during this time (from oldest to youngest); The other period of interruption occurred between 350 and 250 Ma when sporadic pulses of mud swept southward into the Death Valley region during the erosion of highlands in north-central Nevada.

A marine carbonate platform only tens of feet deep but more than 100 miles (160 km) wide stretched westward to a fringing rim of offshore reefs.

[12] The Death Valley area's carbonates appear to represent all three environments (down-slope basin, reef, and back-reef platform) owing to movement through time of the reef-line itself.

An area of great compression called a subduction zone was formed in the early-to-mid Mesozoic, which replaced the quiet, sea-covered continental margin with erupting volcanoes and uplifting mountains.

[13] A chain of volcanoes pushed through the continental crust parallel to the deep trench, fed by magma rising from the subducting oceanic plate as it entered the Earth's hot interior.

[13] Compressive forces caused thrust faults to develop and granitic blobs of magma called plutons to rise in the Death Valley region and beyond, most notably producing the Sierra Nevada Batholith to the west.

[13] One of these relatively small granitic plutons was emplaced 67–87 Ma and spawned one of the more profitable precious metal deposits in the Death Valley area, giving rise to the town and mines of Skidoo.

[13] Large parts of previously deposited formations were removed; probably by streams that washed the sediment into the Cretaceous Seaway that longitudinally divided North America to the east.

Deposition resumed some 35 Ma in the Oligocene epoch on a flood plain that developed in the area; sluggish streams migrated laterally over the surface, laying down cobbles, sand, and mud.

Starting around 16 Ma in Miocene time and continuing into the present, a large part of the North American Plate in the region has been under extension by literally being pulled apart.

[5] Debate still surrounds the cause of this crustal stretching, but an increasingly popular idea among geologists called the slab gap hypothesis states that the spreading zone of the subducted Farallon Plate is pushing the continent apart.

[17] Total movement of the Pamamint block between the Garlock and Furnace Creek Faults is 50 miles (80 km) to the northwest, giving birth to Death Valley in the process.

[31] Additional subsidence of the Furnace Creek Basin was filled by the four-million-year-old Funeral Formation, which consists of 2,000 feet (610 m) of conglomerates, sand, mud and volcanic material.

[15] Snowmelt from alpine glaciers on the nearby Sierra Nevada during glacial periods fed rivers that flowed into the valleys of the region year round.

So during the cooler and wetter pluvial climates of the glacial periods, much of eastern California, all of Nevada, and western Utah were covered by large lakes separated by linear islands (the present day ranges).

[33] Fish that had migrated into the lake system from the Colorado River started to die off; the only survivors are the minnow-sized Death Valley pupfish and related species that adapted to living in springs.

False color image of Death and Panamint valleys area from space. The smaller linear valley is Panamint Valley and the larger one is Death Valley. The mountain range between Death and Panamint valleys is the Panamint Range and the Black Mountains bound the other side of Death Valley. (NASA image)
View north across Saratoga Spring ponds to hills consisting of late Precambrian Pahrump Group rocks. White band is talc formed by reaction of dolomite with the black diabase enclosing it. A sill of diabase magma intruded between sedimentary layers of Crystal Spring Formation, now seen flanking the diabase at lower left. All units now tilt to east (right). The spring water rises along a fault and becomes ponded by fringing barrier dunes. [ 4 ] (NPS archive image)
Late Precambrian Noonday Formation scoured in Mosaic Canyon by episodic flow. (USGS photo)
Death Valley 3D views
Striped Butte in Butte Valley. Steeply tilted limestone beds of the Permian Anvil Spring Formation. A major fault behind the butte separates it from Precambrian Noonday and Johnnie Formation rocks, about 1 ⁄ 2 billion years older. (USGS photo)
Skidoo townsite in 1906
Full extent of the Basin and Range. (NPS image)
The deep Death Valley basin is filled with sediment (light yellow) eroded from the surrounding mountains. Black lines show some of the major faults that formed the valley. (USGS image)
Split Cinder Cone was produced by magma that followed a fault plane. That same fault has since moved laterally, tearing the small volcano in half. [ 25 ] (Tom Bean, NPS image)
Artist's Palette got its colors from volcanic deposits
Shoreline Butte showing Lake Manly shorelines
The Lake Manly lake system as it might have looked during its last maximum extent 22,000 years ago. Arrows indicate river water flow, gray lines are current highways, and red dots are towns. (USGS image)
Faults in the Death Valley area active during the Quaternary
This false-color radar image shows central Death Valley and the different surface types in the area. Radar is sensitive to surface roughness with rough areas showing up brighter than smooth areas, which appear dark. This is seen in the contrast between the bright mountains that surround the dark, smooth basins and valleys of Death Valley. The image shows Furnace Creek alluvial fan (green crescent feature) at the far right, and the sand dunes near Stove Pipe Wells at the center. (NASA image)