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Black Mountains | |
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![]() A hiker walks up Dante's View, in the Black Mountains | |
Highest point | |
Peak | Funeral Peak,Black Mountains (California) |
Elevation | 6,384 ft (1,946 m) |
Geography | |
Black Mountains [1] | |
Country | United States |
State | California |
District | Inyo County |
Range coordinates | 36°8′55.837″N116°39′31.160″W / 36.14884361°N 116.65865556°W |
Topo map | USGS Dantes View |
The Black Mountains are a mountain range located in the southeastern part of Inyo County, California, within southeastern Death Valley National Park.
The Black Mountains are a southern range of the Amargosa Range System and lie in a generally north–south direction at their southwestern end. Their formation has been classified as the Amargosa Chaos.
Lower Death Valley lies to the west & southwest of the Black Mountains section, with Greenwater Valley and the Greenwater Range to the northeast. The Black Mountains and Greenwater Range abut the Funeral Mountains on the north, also at the southern terminus of the Amargosa Range. The Amargosa River turns south-southwest, around the three sub-ranges, then northwest into Death Valley. The Owlshead Mountains are to the south across the Amargosa River and its steep descent into Death Valley.
The range reaches an elevation of 6,384 feet (1,946 m) above sea level at Funeral Peak. Dante's View and Coffin Peak lie at the northern end of the range.
The Lila C Mine, of "The Borax King" Francis Marion Smith and his Pacific Coast Borax Company, was developed to mine borax just east of the range. Around 1914 he built the Death Valley Railroad to primarily serve the newer Ryan C. Mine above it within the Black Mountains, with a spur to the Lila C. tracks.
The Funeral Mountains is a short, arid mountain range in the United States along the California-Nevada border approximately 100 mi (160 km) west of Las Vegas. The mountains are considered a subrange of the Amargosa Range that form the eastern wall of Death Valley.
The Amargosa River is an intermittent waterway, 185 miles (298 km) long, in southern Nevada and eastern California in the United States. It drains a high desert region, the Amargosa Valley in the Amargosa Desert northwest of Las Vegas, into the Mojave Desert, and finally into Death Valley where it disappears into the ground aquifer. Except for a small portion of its route in the Amargosa Canyon in California and a small portion at Beatty, Nevada, the river flows above ground only after a rare rainstorm washes the region. A 26-mile (42 km) stretch of the river between Shoshone and Dumont Dunes is protected as a National Wild and Scenic River. At the south end of Tecopa Valley the Amargosa River Natural Area protects the habitat.
The Amargosa Valley is the valley through which the Amargosa River flows south, in Nye County, southwestern Nevada and Inyo County in the state of California. The south end is alternately called the "Amargosa River Valley'" or the "Tecopa Valley." Its northernmost point is around Beatty, Nevada and southernmost is Tecopa, California, where the Amargosa River enters into the Amargosa Canyon.
Rhyolite is a ghost town in Nye County, in the U.S. state of Nevada. It is in the Bullfrog Hills, about 120 miles (190 km) northwest of Las Vegas, near the eastern boundary of Death Valley National Park.
The exposed geology of the Death Valley area presents a diverse and complex set of at least 23 formations of sedimentary units, two major gaps in the geologic record called unconformities, and at least one distinct set of related formations geologists call a group. 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. These rocks were intruded by a mass of granite 1400 Ma and later uplifted and exposed to nearly 500 million years of erosion.
Places of interest in the Death Valley area are mostly located within Death Valley National Park in eastern California.
The Amargosa Range is a mountain range in Inyo County, California and Nye County, Nevada. The 110-mile (180 km) range runs along most of the eastern side of California's Death Valley, separating it from Nevada's Amargosa Desert. The U-shaped Amargosa River flows clockwise around the perimeter of the range, ending 282 feet (86 m) below sea level in the Badwater Basin.
Francis Marion Smith was an American miner, business magnate and civic builder in the Mojave Desert, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Oakland, California.
The Pacific Coast Borax Company (PCB) was a United States mining company founded in 1890 by the American borax magnate Francis Smith, the "Borax King".
The Owlshead Mountains are located at the southern end of Death Valley National Park near the border of the Fort Irwin Military Reservation in San Bernardino County, California, US.
The Amargosa Desert is located in Nye County in western Nevada, United States, along the California–Nevada border, comprising the northeastern portion of the geographic Amargosa Valley, north of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.
The Greenwater Range is a mountain range located in the eastern Mojave Desert in Inyo County, California. They are located west of the section of California State Route 127 north of Shoshone, California.
The Resting Spring Range is found in the eastern Mojave Desert of California near the Nevada state line in the United States. The range lies in a generally north–south direction to the west of the Nopah Range and southeast of the Amargosa Range and Greenwater Range.
Greenwater was an unincorporated community near Death Valley located in the eastern side of the Inyo County, California. It is now a deserted ghost town.
Dante's View is a viewpoint terrace at 1,669 m (5,476 ft) height, on the north side of Coffin Peak, along the crest of the Black Mountains, overlooking Death Valley. Dante's View is about 25 km (16 mi) south of Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park.
The Bullfrog Hills are a small mountain range of the Mojave Desert in southern Nye County, southwestern Nevada. Bullfrog Hills was so named from a fancied resemblance of its ore to the color of a bullfrog.
Smith Mountain, 5,915 feet (1,803 m), is a peak in the Black Mountains of the Amargosa Range in Death Valley National Park in California.
Ryan is an unincorporated community in Inyo County, California that is now privately owned and stewarded by the Death Valley Conservancy. A former mining community and company town, Ryan is situated at an elevation of 3,045 feet (928 m) in the Amargosa Range, 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Dante's View and 15 miles (24 km) southeast of Furnace Creek.
Amargosa Opera House and Hotel is a historic building and cultural center located in Death Valley Junction, in eastern Inyo County, California near Death Valley National Park.
Lake Tecopa is a former lake in Inyo County, southern California. It developed during the Miocene and the Pleistocene within a tectonic basin close to the border with Nevada. Fed by the Amargosa River and some neighbouring washes, it eventually culminated to a surface area of 235 square kilometres (91 sq mi) around 186,000 years ago and left sediments. Afterwards, the Amargosa River cut a gorge out of the lake and into Death Valley with its Lake Manly, draining the lake. The present-day towns of Shoshone, California and Tecopa, California lie within the basin of the former lake.