The Springs of Death Valley
by Richard Denning

The Springs of Death Valley
by Richard Denning

        The warm, moist air moves slowly onto the coast of California after thousands of miles and many days over the sea. It is loaded with water, and a steady rain falls on the green hills as it has during thousands of winters past. And, as before, an obstacle stands in the storm's path. The Coast Range, a string of mountains from two to four thousand feet high and four hundred miles long, forces the air higher and higher, expanding it and cooling it until it is made to give up more of the precious moisture carried for so long.


Rain and snow are left behind as the inexorable journey continues across the central valley to another great barrier, the Sierra Nevada. Once again the air is raised by the pressure behind and the slopes in front, is diffused and dessicated, leaving a white mantle on thousands of square miles of mountain peaks and stocking California's water supply for another year. Yet the process is unfinished. Before releasing this storm to the arrid southwest, nature will use yet another mountain wall to wring it dry, almost to the last drop.


As the tempest floats at last over the Inyo and Panamint mountains, the land drops away into a vast valley, one hundred miles long and two hundred-eighty feet lower than the sea. The air falls and is compressed, warming itself and the land. This is Death Valley, the lowest place in the United States and often the hottest spot on earth.

Death Valley from Dante's View

This is a very dry valley. Infrequent rainfall amounting to one and three quarters inches per year is more than balanced by an evaporation rate estimated at one hundred fifty inches per year. Because of this, the valley has become a great salt flat, a remnant of the evaporation of Lake Manly ter to fifteen thousand years ago, and of ages of mineralized water running into the sink with no outlet. These deep salt beds are over a thousand feet thick in places, and have rendered even some relatively well watered areas barren of life.

The suprising thing, however, is not that much of the water is salty, but that any water in the valley could be fresh. Some amazement generally accompanies the discovery that a chain of springs, wells and ponds reaches from one end of the valley to the other, in the midst of the salt and sand, yet quite drinkable.

In a region so hot and dry, the little water there is assumes a great importance to the growth and distribution of plant and animal life. The distribution of water, of course, is controlled by the geologic formations that trap it, funnel it, and occasionally release it to the surface. In those few places where moisture does come near the surface, Death Valley assumes a lush, humid, almost tropical aspect as hundreds of plant types compete for the rapidly evaporating fluid.

Animal life, too finds itself controlled in large part by the geology of Death Valley. All larger animals need water to drink, and ultimately plants to eat. Even the Kangaroo rat and Pocket mouse, who meet their requirements by synthesis of water from dry foods, are concentrated near the plants whose seeds they eat. Many species of birds live in the valley or migrate there, including a surprising variety of aquatic types feeding in the marshy areas near the springs.

Another part of the struggle between life and geology here is the adaptation that some species have made to the adverse heat, salt and dryness that really define Death Valley. Salt Creek, Saratoga Spring, and the Amargosa River, for example, are home for fish, a unique species for each of these water sources. The constancy of these springs can be appreciated by realizing that the last period of wetness in the valley disappeared over two thousand years ago, yet these fish still live, generations passing by the hundreds in small water holes.

 Even the salty basin itself is not totally devoid of life. At Badwater, another unique species, an aquatic snail, lives in water so saline that salt crystals grow from the banks. Here also is found Ditchgrass growing in ponds much saltier than the oceans. Fungi and bacteria have been grown from samples of valley water containing sixteen per cent dissolved solids, five times the concentration of seawater.

But the Death Valley of legend is no haven for plants and animals, nor is its glory to be found on those cool, often cold days of winter when a casual visitor may tour the valley in a day. Rather, the real wonder that is Death Valley must be savored in the heat, the drought, the full bloom of an afternoon in July. In this season, Man's priorities are inevitably simplified to those of the other creatures of the park: shade and water. Then, Man, too is governed by a few geologic relationships just as surely as any Creosote or Coyote.

        --End-
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