This is the eighth diary installment of The Dkos Road Tour Series. See explanation at the close of this diary. I trust you will find the information enjoyable and educational. Our destinations today will take us, first, to Southeast Utah, then to Central California, and from there to Southwest Colorado. As a reminder, the information herein is “layered.” Meaning, the reader chooses how much or how little read, graduating from the essentials to more in-depth details. By the way, if you enjoy the series, it would be good to have a recommendation from commentators. Gracias.
DEAD HORSE POINT STATE PARK
Location/Geography: Southeast-Central Utah. Grand Count. Closet City or Town: Moab. Covers a few square miles at the edge of a plateau just north of the Island in the Sky (Canyonlands) sector. Area: 5,200 acres (21 square miles/54 km²). Altitude: about 6,000 feet (1,828 m).
Coordinates: 38.5083ºN, 109.7422ºW (http://bitly/1hWFJrF)
Google images: http://bitly/1puFeaf
Maps: http://bitly/SIpWQN
√ Spotlight: A modest-sized parcel with an expanse of grazing land. A peculiar name for a state park with peculiar (and sundry) replies. The main question is how many horses succumbed at this setting? Highly scenic point and select views of the Colorado River. Some of southeast Utah’s most engaging geology. Focus: scenery, geology, and a dead horse or horses theme.
√ Snapshot: Just north of Moab, on Hwy. 191, is Dead Horse Point SP. A dazzling panoramic view from the summit where the dark-stained facade Wingate Sandstone frames the scenery on all sides. The main overlook at the park offers a 270º vista over side canyons and the Colorado River some 1,900 feet (579 m) below. Eroded ridges, buttes, pinnacles and sheer cliffs with Moab's prominent La Sal Mountains enhances the backdrop. Several branches of Shafer Canyon show up, which is located in Canyonlands Island in the Sky district. An impressive series of goosenecks (meanders) adds to the inspirational view.
√ Guided Tour Essentials: The remarkable advantage of visiting this small state park is the vista imbued in the setting. Surrounded by tall, sheer cliffs some 2,000 feet high (609 m), the park’s narrow neck of land measures 30 yards (27.4 m), connecting the mesa to the main plateau. The secondary draw for tourists about this prominent overlook; that is apart from the spectacular panorama and geologic backdrop, is the graphic name of the park, which of course includes the fable. Namely, the escapade of a rancher rounding up horses and herding them to this locale. According to one story, he corralled the stock by constructing a makeshift fence across the narrowest part of the overlook. Thus, the mustangs were utterly trapped on the far side of a literal dead-end. Sadly, some errant ranch hand didn’t have sense enough to leave water for the horses, and they all died of thirst. There is also another version, and somewhat less depressing, that claims there was only one horse left and forgotten, then ultimately it perished. Tragic, nonetheless. Despite the actual number of horses (dead or alive in either tale), whatever happened here also helped the promontory earn its dubious name. In time (1959), the boxy setting was declared a state park, which took place several years before the sanctioning of nearby Canyonlands as a national park.
Bonus Details: One dramatic scene from the cult film "Thelma & Louise" was filmed at this locale. Many other scenes were also filmed in and around Moab, particularly with the gorgeous backdrop of the La Sal Mountains rising upward from a surrounding fractured pavement. Indeed, next to Monument Valley, Moab is the second favored outdoor shooting location in this part of the Southwest, especially for Westerns.
Directions: Travel 9 miles (14.5 km) northwest of Moab on Hwy. 191, then 23 miles (37 km) southwest on Utah 313 to end of the road.
Contact Information: Dead Horse State Park, P. O. Box 609, Moab UT 84532-0609. Phone: 435-259.2614
Here's my recommendation for a follow-up URL: http://bitly/2cTZUYv
DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK
Location/Geography: California and Nevada just east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Closet City or Town: Beatty; Lathrop Wells; Pahrump (all in Nevada); Ridgecrest, Olancha, Lone Pine (all in California). Area: 5,262 square miles (13,628 km²), encompassing Saline Valley, a large part of Panamint Valley, almost all of Death Valley, and parts of several mountain ranges.
Coordinates: 36º14’31”N 116º49’33”W (http://bitly/1hWGnW7)
Geologic graphics/illustrations: http://bitly/1lJcVSI
Google images/maps: http://bitly/TVCoOq
√ Spotlight: There is no single description that captures the immensity of this landscape. Environs of two extremes: sand and a visceral backdrop of metamorphic mountains. Essentially, the valley is hotter than the proverbial Hades for most of the year. One of the most rugged, scenic, and diverse environs in North America. In a manner of speaking, the geologic panorama is to die for. The park claims the lowest elevation below sea level in North America. Focus: geology, human and natural history, and desert ecology.
√ Snapshot: Death Valley stretches out within the broad boundaries of the Mojave Desert and laid down far below towering mountains. Its reputation is fierce though the epithet death is a misnomer. Still, it's a great big valley, a basin, featuring the continent’s driest and hottest climate; also the lowest elevation (286 feet/86 m) below sea level in North America. Some 550 square miles (1,424 km²) of Death Valley is below sea level. The lowest sector, called Badwater, is 76 miles (122 km) east of Mount Whitney (14,505 feet/4,421 m above sea level)––the highest point in the contiguous United States. Both geographic and topographic extremes create an amazing contrast of elevations. Death Valley holds the record for the highest reported temperature in the Western Hemisphere: 134ºF (56.7ºC). This reliable reading was taken at Furnace Creek on July 10, 1913, and falls just short of the world record 136ºF (57.8ºC) claimed by Al 'Aziziyah in Libya on September 13, 1922. Another incidental record is the valley’s golf course that's located on the property: it’s the lowest elevation of any golf course in the world––214 feet/65 m below sea level. Does this mean golf balls, when struck, go farther? Death Valley encompasses a desiccated landscape of extreme topographical features. The expanded national park was dedicated in 1994. Decades earlier, Death Valley became a national monument in 1933.
√ Guided Tour Essentials: The main feature of Death Valley includes the Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve. Sharing borders with California and Nevada, the reserve spreads out in the Great Basin east of the Sierra Nevada Range. Chiefly, the parched setting of the valley is located in Inyo County, California, stretching from north to south between the U-shaped Amargosa Mountains (a Spanish word for bitter tasting water). Rising on the eastern side of the park’s perimeter, the range measures 110 miles (180 km long). The highest point is 8,738 feet (2,653 m). The higher Panamint Range, also running north-south, stretches 100 miles (160 km), forming the western wall of the valley, and is part of the Basin and Range Province. Rising at the western end of the Great Basin, the highest point, Telescope Peak, boasts an elevation of 11,049 feet (3,369 m) above sea level. There are, even more, mountains to behold in this vicinity. Namely, the Sylvania Mountains trending east and west (7,864 feet/2,397 m) and the smaller Owlshead Mountains (1,683 feet/513 m) rising at the southern end of the park. Approximately 95% of the park is designated a wilderness, which covers 4,774 square miles (12,365 km²). Overall, Death Valley is the largest protected landscape in the lower 48 States and the largest national park. At one time, mining was the primary activity in the valley before the area became protected. This facet of the valley's celebrated history was the highlight of a popular television series, Death Valley Days, which aired weekly from 1952 to 1975. Before the series, the program was broadcast on radio from 1930 to 1945. It’s easily the longest combined media program series ever produced. Seeing or hearing these broadcasts first introduced American audiences to the austere beauty of an Out West setting. However, the tagalong fierce reputation was mainly based on dramatic hyperbole and typical Hollywood sensationalism. In other words, not representative of the equally typical shoot ‘em up frontier sagas.
More Guided Tour Essentials (because it’s such a great big place): The natural environs of this wide, long landscape has been shaped largely by geology. The valley-basin itself is a graben (i.e., ordinarily, a block of rock that lies between two faults that have moved downward to form a depression between two adjacent fault blocks). Death Valley, therefore, represents a block of land bordered by parallel faults. The oldest rocks are extensively metamorphosed and are, at least, 1.7 billion years old. The age rivals that of the Grand Canyon's basement Precambrian rock foundation; that is when its clock of time metamorphism began. Warm, shallow primal seas deposited marine sediments until rifting opened the Pacific Ocean (i.e., the Gulf of California caused by the San Andreas Fault). Additional sedimentation occurred until a subduction zone formed off the coast, which then uplifted the entire region. This ancient event emerged from below the sea and partly created a line of volcanoes. Later, the planet’s crust started to pull apart, creating the ensuing Basin and Range Province. Valleys created by the mountains eventually filled with sediment during wet cycles between glacial periods. The result formed large inland bodies of water such as Lake Manly. Much, much later in time, humans walked the Earth and Death Valley was what it was: a dry, and typically roasting setting laid out below tall, snow-capped mountains.
Bonus Material: The first documented Anglos to enter this region arrived during the winter of 1849. The group came out West searching for gold and thought they could save time by taking a shortcut to the promising gold fields of California. However, these hopeful prospectors ended up getting marooned for weeks in a forlorn place hundreds of miles from their planned destination. Realizing the trouble they were in, someone in the party dubbed the setting Death Valley, mainly because the misguided adventure had cost one man his life. After that, the humongous desert and mountainous setting retained its equivocal name. Several short-lived boom towns later sprang up during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Mainly, rustic settlements cropped up, where nefarious townspeople exploited miners by usurping their bonanzas of gold, and in a variety of ways. Actually, the only long-term and profitable ore mined in this region amounted to borax, which is a mineral used to make soap; also an important industrial compound. Today, borax is an essential component of high-temperature resistant borosilicate glass products. For example, Pyrex cookware. Heavy wagons pulled by twenty-mule teams were also exploited to transport ore out of the valley. Like a train moving slowly across a flat desert pavement, the parades of mules and wagons were already a legend in the making: the mules and wagons that crossed this parched and desolate landscape became the subject of books, radio programs, television series, and movies (many of them Westerns).
Why Is It So Hellish Hot Here? As a rule, where the sun heats the ground and heat radiates upward, lower altitudes tend to have higher temperatures. It’s as simple as that. Or is it? In Death Valley, there are also other variables to consider. For instance, elementary climatology teaches this principle: as the air begins to rise it's soon trapped by (1) the surrounding elevation and (2) the weight of the air above it (essentially the atmospheric pressure). Atmospheric pressure is also higher at very low altitudes than under the same conditions higher up at sea level. The reason for this is because there is more air (meaning, more distance) between the ground and the top of the atmosphere. Add to this fact another meteorological insight: when the atmospheric pressure traps the heat near the ground, the wind currents naturally arise. Hence, circulating very hot air and dispersing heat to all areas despite shade and other factors. This horizontal movement and retention of heat are especially important in Death Valley because both factors provide the terrain's specific climate and geography. The valley is also nearly surrounded by lofty mountain ranges while the surface landscape far below is mostly flat and devoid of plants. Thus, a high percentage of the sun's heat reaches the ground and is absorbed by soil and rock.
The physics of the matter come down to this salient point: When air at ground level is heated, it begins to rise. Moving up and past the steep bulwark of mountain ranges, the air cools slightly but then begins to sink back down toward the valley. The sink factor is, therefore, pivotal because the air becomes more compressed and then reheated by the sun to a higher temperature. In this case, air moves up and down the flank of the mountains in cycles; also, in a circular motion. It follows this Science 101 class is essentially describing how a convection oven works, albeit here in the valley it’s a leviathan-sized natural oven. The superheated air also plays another important role: it markedly increases ground temperature.
Bottom line about the valley’s excessive heat? This consequential effect instigates hot wind currents trapped by atmospheric pressure and mountains but mostly stays within the valley. And it’s precisely these hot winds that contribute to and perpetuate, drought-like conditions in Death Valley preventing cloud formations from migrating through its ranging confines. Precipitation is also often realized as phenomena called “virga” (i.e., an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud though eventually evaporating before reaching the ground).
Directions: The main road transecting Death Valley from east to west is California Hwy. 190. On the eastern border is Nevada, where Route 95 parallels the park from north to south with connecting highways at Scotty's Junction (SR 267), Beatty (SR 374) and Lathrop Wells (SR 373). Coming from the west, SR 14 and US Route 395 lead to Ridgecrest, California, where SR 178 heads east (into the park). Further north on Hwy. 395 at Olancha, California, Hwy. 190 joins and enters the park in that same direction, this time, further north, at Lone Pine, California, Hwy. 136 joins Hwy. 190 and heads east into the park. South of Death Valley, I-15 routes through Baker, California. From here, take SR 127, which runs north from Baker to Shoshone, and take the Death Valley Junction, with connections on SR 178 from Shoshone, and another connection with California Hwy. 190 at the Death Valley Junction.
Contact Information: Death Valley National Park, P. O. Box 579, Death Valley CA 92328. Phone (visitor information): 760-786-3200; Fax 786-3283. Resort Information (operated by Xanterra): Furnace Creek Resort, P. O. Box 187, Death Valley CA 92328. Physical Address: Hwy. 190, Death Valley 92328. Phone: 760-786.2345; Fax 786.2504. Central Reservations: Phone: 800-236.7916; Fax 303-297.3175
Here's my recommendation for a follow-up URL: http://1.usa.gov/1ftSbI0
Domínguez, Escalante and Lowry Ruins
Location/Geography: Southwest Colorado. Montezuma County. Closest other city or town: Delores; Durango; Cortez. The museum is 7,000 feet (2,150 m) above sea level at the foot of the San Juan Mountains and overlooks the McPhee Reservoir and the Montezuma Valley. The site is some 17 miles (27 km) by road from Mesa Verde NP.
Coordinates: 37.37056ºN 109ºW (http://bitly/1kTNEoT)
Google images: and http://bitly/1iwjNy3
Additional images: http://bitly/1ncZOY3
Maps: http://bitly/1opleWV
√ Spotlight: Located inside the perimeter of the Canyons of the Ancients NM. Three major ruins to explore. A hands-on interpretative center at the museum. Excels in cultural awareness and interactive displays. Focus: Human history and archaeological ruins.
√ Snapshot: Visiting the ruins encompasses a visit to the Anasazi Heritage Center (AHC), which combines a museum, research center and curation facility on its property. With some three million records, samples, and artifacts from public lands throughout southwestern Colorado. The facilities serve as the main Visitor Center for the nearby Canyons of the Ancients NM, thence to the three ruins located on the property. To fully appreciate viewing the Domínguez, Escalante and Lowry ruins, having an understanding of what the Ancestral Puebloans did in their daily lives instills a cultural awareness for visitors. The museum features exhibits on archaeology and local Native American history and its varied cultures over the centuries. Many exhibits are hands-on and, therefore, interactive. For instance, weaving on a loom, grinding corn meal on a metate (pronounced “me-tah-tay”), examining tiny traces of the past through microscopes and touching artifacts adds to the experience of being here. Afterward, viewing the two main archaeological sites on the premises (Domínguez and Escalante), dating from the 12th-century visitors can better appreciate the talent and endurance of these prehistoric dwellers in a seeming adverse setting. Additionally, the center offers an extensive research library of archaeology and anthropology resources.
Domínguez Complex: The layout of these smaller ruins suggests it was likely a dwelling intended only for a smaller family unit. Possibly, four to six people lived here, and perhaps one, two or three defines the actual census. The structure has four rooms marked by low stone walls, including all that remains of a roofed structure dating from the early part of the 12th-century, say, around 1123. Complete with poles, brush and earthen materials the room farthest east may have been added after the first three were built. Just south of this room block is a dirt-walled kiva 11 feet (3.3 m) in diameter. It was not possible to stabilize the kiva and was reburied to keep its perimeter intact. These ruins and the architectural design are a fine example of the local Northern San Juan branch of the Ancestral Puebloan culture. Other relatively regional ruins are the People from Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, and Chaco Canyon.
Escalante Pueblo: This, the larger ruin on the property, signifies a compact and relatively substantially sized village built on a hilltop overlooking the Dolores River. Considering tree-ring dating of the wood used in its construction, archaeologists believe it was occupied, at least, three different times. The designers built the main complex in 1129 and lived there for about nine years. The architecture and masonry indicate this pueblo was one of the northernmost settlements influenced by the culture of Chaco Canyon, which is about 100 miles (160 km) to the south. Some archaeologists speculate that such villages were part of an interdependent system spread across the Four Corners region. The Escalante Pueblo may also have been a gathering place for religious or social activities of people in the smaller surrounding villages. Designed with rectangular blocks, some twenty-eight rooms surround a kiva. Other rooms within the overall structure were used as work areas, sleeping quarters and storage. These spaces are also larger than those typically found in the local region. Their walls were made of parallel faces enclosing a rubble fill-core, both features typical of Chacoan construction. Lowry Pueblo is another nearby Chaco-style site (second photo).
Directions: From Cortez or Durango head toward Dolores, Colorado. The Visitor Center is 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Dolores, Colorado, on Hwy. 184.
Contact Information: AHC 27501, Hwy. 184, Dolores CO 80323. Phone: 970-882.4801; Fax 882.7035
Here's my recommendations for a follow-up URL: http://bitly/UBqmdy
also, http://on.doi.gov/STQW00
FYI: This latest installment of THE DKOS ROAD TOUR SERIES provides an excerpt from the larger text, SCENIC ICONS OF THE SOUTHWEST (http://amzn.to/2on3z89). The soft cover 8.5 x 11 format (491 pages) provides the same information but also includes a thorough background on geology, natural and human history and miscellaneous subject matter. Additionally, there is an Android app available and the less expensive Kindle version. For information about myself and my books featured on Amazon, feel free to drop by www.richholtzin.com and leave a comment. I also write under the nom de plume, RK ALLEMAN. For more background about this tour series, please read the 3/29/2017 diary, HIT THE ROAD TOUR SERIES: An Introduction.
Another installment of this series will be next Sunday. Hopefully, every Sunday there will be a trio of new scenic icons for the reader’s enjoyment and enlightenment. (For those who want to know where they’re going in these upcoming tours, the previously mentioned introduction lists a Table of Contents (in alphabetical order).
About The Author: Rich, who writes under the nom de plume, RK ALLEMAN, has worked in the field as an outdoors educator and interpreter for the likes of the Grand Canyon Field Institute (nearly 20 years), Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff), and Yavapai College (Prescott, AZ). For nearly 40 years, he has backpacked some 8,000 miles, not including hiking sorties. Most of his works focus on the geosciences (mainly, geology, archaeology, and ecology), human and natural history applicable to the Colorado Plateau Province (aka the “Four Corners Region of the Southwest).
FYI: Previous diaries:
Intro diary http://bit.ly/2nu738O
1st diary http://bit.ly/2opAB6Y
2nd diary http://bit.ly/2oe49Cm
3rd diary http://bit.ly/2pFVvMo
4th diary http://bit.ly/2oVFGDQ
5th diary http://bit.ly/2qlfctX
6th diary http://bit.ly/2qG5Vje
7th diary http://bit.ly/2qFL9k6