Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley. The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, as well as the hottest, driest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States. It contains Badwater Basin, the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere and lowest in North America at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. More than 93% of the park is a designated wilderness area. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment including creosote bush, Joshua tree, bighorn sheep, coyote, and the endangered Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.
Kern County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield.
The Santa Monica Mountains is a coastal mountain range in Southern California, next to the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Transverse Ranges. Because of its proximity to densely populated regions, it is one of the most visited natural areas in California. The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area encompasses this mountain range.
Stephen Tyng Mather was an American industrialist and conservationist who was the first director of the National Park Service. As president and owner of Thorkildsen-Mather Borax Company he became a millionaire. With his friend the journalist Robert Sterling Yard, Mather led a publicity campaign to promote the creation of a unified federal agency to oversee National Parks administration, which was established in 1916. In 1917, Mather was appointed to lead the NPS, the new agency created within the Department of the Interior. He served until 1929, during which time Mather created a professional civil service organization, increased the numbers of parks and national monuments, and established systematic criteria for adding new properties to the federal system.
Kelso is a ghost town and defunct railroad depot in the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County, California, USA. It was named after railroad worker John H. Kelso, whose name was placed into a hat along with two other workers to decide the name of the town. The town was built in 1905 specifically as a railroad station along the rail line between Utah and Los Angeles, originally called "Siding 16," because of its location and nearby springs that provided abundant water.
Christian Brevoort Zabriskie was an American businessman and vice president of Pacific Coast Borax Company. Zabriskie Point on the northeasternmost flank of the Black Mountains east of Death Valley, located in Death Valley National Park is named after him.
The Usarp Mountains are a major Antarctic mountain range, lying west of the Rennick Glacier and trending north to south for about 190 kilometres (118 mi). The feature is bounded to the north by Pryor Glacier and the Wilson Hills.
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 Black Mountains are a mountain range located in the southeastern part of Inyo County, California, within southeastern Death Valley National Park.
Piru Creek is a major stream, about 71 miles (114 km) long, in northern Los Angeles County and eastern Ventura County, California. It is a tributary of the Santa Clara River, the largest stream system in Southern California that is still relatively natural.
Miller Peak, at 9,470 feet (2,886 m), is the second-highest mountain in Cochise County, Arizona. Located approximately 10 miles south of Sierra Vista, Arizona, it is the highest mountain in the Huachuca mountain range and a popular local hiking destination. The Miller Peak Wilderness encompasses 20,190 acres and is managed by the Coronado National Forest. This is also the most southerly peak and land area to rise above 9,000 feet in the continental United States. The area was affected by the 2011 Monument fire and most of the pine trees seen in older photographs were burned and destroyed. Scrub oak are beginning to replace the areas that were previously covered by pine.
Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor is a linear state park in southwestern Oregon, in the United States. It is 12 miles (19 km) long and thickly forested along steep and rugged coastline with a few small sand beaches. It is named in honor of Samuel H. Boardman, the first Oregon Parks superintendent.
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.
Borax Lake is a 10-acre (4.0 ha) alkaline lake in the Alvord Desert of southeastern Oregon in the United States. The lake is fed by geothermal springs 100 feet (30 m) below the surface that range in temperature from 104 to 300 °F. Surface water temperatures usually range from 61 to 100 °F but occasionally go higher. The springs lie along the Steens fault zone, which runs north–south through the Alvord Valley east of Steens Mountain.
Teel's Marsh is a playa in Nevada, United States. It was the site of "Borax" Smith's first borax works at Marietta, Nevada in 1872, and became the start of his operations that soon became the largest borax operation in the world.
Columbus Marsh is a playa in Nevada, United States. William Troup discovered cottonball borax at the site in 1870 or 1871. Joseph Mosheimer and Emile K. Stevenot, who operated one of the borax concentrating plants at Columbus, hired Francis Marion Smith to cut wood for their plant on nearby Miller Mountain in the Candelaria Hills. Smith subsequently discovered borax himself at Teel's Marsh, where he had sufficient financial success to expand and acquire the borax works at Columbus himself in 1880.
Miller Mountain is located in the Candelaria Hills of Mineral County, Nevada. "Borax" Smith's board-and-batten cabin where he lived when he discovered a rich borax deposit at nearby Teel's Marsh was located here.
The Bear Lodge Mountains are a small mountain range in Crook County, Wyoming. These mountains are protected in the Black Hills National Forest as part of its Bearlodge District. Devils Tower National Monument was the first U.S. National Monument and draws about 400,000 visitors per year to the area. The Bear Lodge Mountains are one of three mountain ranges which compose the Black Hills region and national forest, including the Black Hills itself and South Dakota's Elk Mountains.
