Racetrack Playa is a seasonally dry lake (playa) located in the northern part of the Panamint Mountains that is famous for rocks that mysteriously move across its surface. *3 Members* In the lower, cherty member there are Halysites, Favosites, Syringopora, rugose corals, articulate brachiopods, conodonts, and crinoid debris. [2005] include the Artist Drive and Greenwater in the Furnace Creek), but these differences are not substantial to this paper. 3). Contained within its boundaries is a diverse rock record stretching throughout most of geologic time. The 3 Ma restoration is shown in two phases for convenience. Mostly resistant, gray, white, and tan, rhyolitic lava flows and volcanic domes, and subordinate ashflow and airfall tuff. Rainbow Canyon is a canyon near the western edge of the park. As noted above, Late Proterozoic rocks make up the crest of the Panamint Range. Half-day Tours. Mosaic Canyon's polished marble walls are carved from the Noonday Dolomite and other Precambrian carbonate rocks. Purple polygons (Prot bsmnt) are exposures of Proterozoic basement, generally denoting detachment footwalls, from Workman et al. Ammonites, smooth-shelled brachiopods, belemnites, and hexacorals. 2). At some locations, such as in the Spring Mountains, has sandy carbonate beds and collophane nodules, and in Panamint Range area, lower part contains mostly silty and sandy dolomite, argillaceous quarzite, and minor shale. Most of the holes in the basalt are vesicles that were formed when gas escaped from the cooling lava. Racetrack stones only move once every two or three years and most tracks last for just three or four years. The rocks now exposed in the turtlebacks were exhumed from deep crustal levels as a result of Basin and Range extension; a thick series of Pliocene and younger sediments were deposited on these surfaces before renewed uplift and exhumation to the present-day surface as a result of formation of the Death Valley pull-apart basin. Hamilton (1988) examined the structures at Hanaupah Canyon and correlated this Hanaupah detachment (Hamilton's more appropriate term; HD, Fig. Overview. Rainstorm Member contains mixed clastic and carbonate units, and the "Johnnie oolite", a distinctive grayish-orange ooid-bearing dolomite unit in the lower part of the member. The wetland lies at the southern tip of the Ibex Hills, on the floor of Death Valley and just northeast of the Amargosa River. 74, 1: 376-381, rocks that mysteriously move across its surface, "USGS National Elevation Dataset (NED) 1 meter Downloadable Data Collection from The National Map 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) - National Geospatial Data Asset (NGDA) National Elevation Data Set (NED)", Death Valley National Park Furnace Creek Area (U.S. National Park Service), "Eureka Dunes, Death Valley National Park", "Death Valley Has a Secret Shrine toTea", "Earthquake: 3.2 quake strikes near Teakettle Junction in Death Valley", USGS: Death Valley National Park Virtual Geology Field Trip, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Places_of_interest_in_the_Death_Valley_area&oldid=1150267321, This page was last edited on 17 April 2023, at 05:09. Foraminifera and crinoid columns have also been reported from this formation. Cambrian Death Valley is mysterious enough by day. Rocks now in the crest of the range were metamorphosed to greenschist facies, representing 10 km burial, in the Jurassic, with retrograde metamorphism associated with granitic intrusions in the Cretaceous (Labotka and Albee, 1990). This formation contains one of the best stratigraphically documented trilobite faunas in North America. (1974) showed that the turtlebacks include many linear structures parallel to the direction of strike slip, ranging from minute slickenslides to fault mullions tens or hundreds of meters in amplitude (Wright et al., 1974, p. 54). Other historic charcoal kilns in the United States include the Cottonwood Charcoal Kilns at Owens Lake, the Piedmont Charcoal Kilns in Wyoming, and the Walker Charcoal Kiln in Arizona. Basin and Range extensional allochthons occur along the east flank of the range; these formed during MioceneEarly Pliocene Basin and Range extension. Streptelasmatid corals: Grewingkia, Bighornia, Brachiopods. 4) with that at Tucki Mountain. a. Ubehebe Crater is the largest of more than a dozen of in the Ubehebe Craters field. Ordovician Includes many rhyolite and lesser trachyte and comendite masses, many of them associated with calderas. Fossils include brachiopods, colonial and solitary corals, gastropods, pelmatozoan ossicles, and stromatoporoids. tubes. These strong winds pick-up dust and sand (mostly from the two closest alluvial fans), which literally sand-blast exposed surfaces. First narrows of Fall Canyon Since definition of these domains, satellite geodesy (GPS) has shown that the Walker Lane belt and ECSZ are together accommodating 25% of present-day plate motion between the Pacific and North American plates (Miller et al., 2001; Hammond and Thatcher, 2007). Between the Last Chance Range and Saline Mountains is the graben Eureka Valley. (2005). Modern geologists have documented four major deformational events that faulted and folded the Amargosa Chaos. b. Cemented fan gravel with interbedded basaltic lavas, gravels cut by veins of calcite (Mexican onyx); perhaps 1000 feet thick. *3 Members* a large, cliff-forming carbonate unit with three members (Dunderberg/Halfpint Members, Smokey Member) basal shale and silty limestone beds of this formation are persistently fossiliferous characterized by trilobites, conodonts, and the brachiopod Linnarssonella - Dunderberg/ Halfpint Members are divided into seven facies and contain sponge Hintzespongia, spicule-like elements of Chancelloria, eocrinoid fragments, lingulid and acrotretid brachiopods, trilobites, and single-element species of paraconodonts and protocondonts - Smokey Membercharacterized by the black and buff colored banded dolomite also contains stromatolites and thrombolites within packstones and grain stones, a dark dolomite above the middle of the Nopah Formation contains small-silicified Trempleauan gastropods, a singular mollusk Matthevia, and trilobites. Location Fall Canyon is located in the Grapevine Mountains, towards the less-traveled north end of Death Valley National Park.It is close to Titus Canyon, another colorful ravine that is popular because of the rough one-way track that extends through it - this is a 4WD route that starts from road NV 374 in Nevada, crosses the flat Amargosa Valley into California and then winds through the . Crinoid stems abundant, Including large types. Non-stop winds on this ridge are concentrated and compressed at the top of the hill and are very fast as a result. The canyon offers a suite of folds on almost all scales and styles to bedazzle the geologically-inclined visitor. Based on research, 61 formations are known to exist in the park. Total Driving Time: 8 hours. (2002), in this case supplemented from the map of Hunt and Mabey (1966). In basal 100 feet, trilobite trash beds containing Elburgis, Pseudagnostus, Horriagnostris, Elvinia , Apsotreta. Numerous trilobite trash beds in lower part yield fragments of olenellid trilobites. These volcanics were deposited partly on the exhumed detachment surface from the earlier phase of Basin and Range extension. Base of member is marked by the regionally extensive "silty unit". The Late Miocene intrusives consist of the mafic Willow Springs pluton and the felsic Smith Mountain granite. No fossils. The Lippincott Member (?) 12 Titus Canyon 25 Hidden Valley Dolomite This correlation implies 2555 km of post-eruption offset between the two locations, the distance depending on details of how the intervening faults are restored (McKenna and Hodges, 1990). The Furnace Creek Fault runs through this part of Death Valley. Box 579 6 Nova Formation Late Proterozoic sediment in the hanging wall of the detachment consists of Wood Canyon Formation. From here an easy 1/4 mile walk leads into the canyon narrows . This model, using the preceding data and interpretations, includes two tectonic phases separated by a short interval of relative tectonic quiescence, as summarized in the timing chart in Figure 3. Miller and Pavlis (2005) divided these models into two categories, depending on how strike-slip and low-angle detachment faulting are combined. Hells Gate is a point of interest located in Death Valley National Park, at the intersection of Daylight Pass Road and Beatty Road. . b. Well-bedded quartzite in beds 1-5 feet thick comprising thick members of quartzite 700-800 feet thick separated by 500 feet of purple shale, crossbedding conspicuous in quartzite. Abundant large gastropods in massive dolomite at top: Palliseria and Maclurites, associated with Receptaculites. Cambrian Contains limestone, siltstone, and shale units with the fusilinids Schwagerina and Pseudoschwagerina, solitary corals, bryozoans, and gastropods. (1987) document 810 km of offset on this fault system. Although the ECSZ today accommodates 25% of Pacific-North America relative motion, timing of initiation of this shear zone is poorly known. East of Death Valley, the Tecopa Basin (TB, Fig. Also not consistent with this model is the fact that the Panamint Range is much higher in elevation (highest point is Telescope Peak, 3368 m) than the Black Mountains (highest point is Funeral Peak, 1946 m); this would mean that the hanging wall of the detachment would be higher than the footwall, a structurally unlikely scenario. Cambrian-Late Precambrian Total thickness of formation 1,200-1,500 feet. The Devil's Golf Course is a large salt pan on the floor of Death Valley. Permian Typically located at the end-depositional sites in basin interiors. Quartz grains are usually fine- to medium-grained. As shown in Figure 7, these rocks are found in the footwall of detachments elsewhere in the Death Valley region and their greenschist-grade metamorphism in the Panamint Range (Labotka and Albee, 1990) is also consistent with deep burial and subsequent exhumation like at these other detachments. There does not appear to be a high-angle fault along the west side of the Panamints. This implies 7 km of unroofing between the Cretaceous and 10.6 Ma, with some of this unroofing due to the extension (Labotka and Albee, 1990). Also in this area, McKenna and Hodges (1990) mapped the 8.69.4 Ma Trail Canyon volcanic sequence (Fig. Mixed brachiopods, corals, and crinoid stems. 7), probably because this section is the oldest that covers the entire area. Cambrian Widely distributed fusilinids. Along the profile of Figure 9, the west flank of the range averages a 10 dip and the east flank 9.5. Rocks exposed in the Panamint Range include Proterozoic metamorphic basement, a Neoproterozoic through Paleozoic sedimentary section, and younger Tertiary sedimentary and volcanic rocks. It features megabreccia and other rock formations, petroglyphs, and wildlife of various kinds, including bighorn sheep. Wowzers. In Wildrose Canyon, unit contains abundant microcline, and dominant rock type is granite. the dolomite member contains conical calcareous fossils including metazoan small shelly fossils of Cloudina in another member there are rare occurrences of the trace fossil Planolites. Over time, the sediments compressed into limestone and a related calcium-magnesium carbonate called dolomite. Figure 10A, Present day, shows the geometry of the Basin and Range detachment surface. 30 Racetrack Dolomite a. Lacustrine and alluvial fan deposits found throughout the valley surface. Miocene b. Cemented gravel; mostly stream deposits; 3,000 feet thick. The Walker Lane belt and ECSZ therefore together form a single strike-slip zone, which will be referred to as the ECSZ in this paper. This desert butte was once an island in a lake that filled Death Valley several times during the Pleistocene ice ages. Unit is 30 to 350 m thick in the NTS area, 70 m thick in the Montgomery Mountains, 106 m thick in the Dry Mountain area, Cottonwood Mountains. Locally metamorphosed to subgreenschist to lower greenschist facies south of NTS in Funeral Mountains and Specter Range. A mix of carbonate and siliciclastic sequences from a shallow, near-shore depo. (2002). Extension along the Harrisburg fault (HF, Fig. Cross section across Tucki Mountain along profile A in previous location maps. 18 to 5 Ma, involved Basin and Rangestyle low-angle extension with fault blocks made up predominantly of Paleozoic sediments moving on detachment faults that exhumed rocks from mid crustal levels. Uper part is mostly cliff-foming, orange to gray silty limestone, and lower part contains mostly clastic rocks. b. Cemented gravel; playa deposits, much volcanic debris, perhaps 5,000 feet thick. The scarce springs and surrounding lush oases support thriving plant communities and attract a wide variety of animals.