Zabriskie Point
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Zabriskie Point is an area in Death Valley National Park noted for its beautiful erosional landscape. It is called a badlands due to its difficult-to-traverse topography. The area is composed of sediment from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried-up 5 million years ago - long before Death Valley existed. The landscape is in danger of being eroded away due to a nearby diversion of a water channel. It is named after Christian Brevoort Zabriskie of Wyoming Territory, the vice-president and general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company in early twentieth century.
Zabriskie_Point-Panarama.jpg
Furnace Creek Lake
Millions of years prior to the actual sinking and widening of Death Valley and the existence of Lake Manly (see Geology of the Death Valley area), another lake covered a large portion of Death Valley including the area around Zabriskie Point. This ancient lake was here starting approximately nine million years ago. During several million years of the lake's existence, sediments were collecting at the bottom in the form of saline muds, gravels from nearby mountains, and ashfalls from the then-active Black Mountain volcanic field. These sediments combined to form what we today call the Furnace Creek Formation. The climate along Furnace Creek Lake was dry but not nearly as dry as today's. Camels, mastodons, horses, carnivores, and birds left tracks in the lakeshore muds along with fossilized grass and reeds. Borates which made up a large degree of Death Valley's historical past were concentrated in the lakebeds from hot spring waters and alteration of rhyolite in the nearby volcanic field. Weathering and alteration by thermal waters are also responsible for the variety of colors represented there.
Regional mountains building to the west influenced the climate to become more and more arid, causing the lake to dry up - creating a playa. Subsequent widening and sinking of Death Valley and the additional uplift of today's Black Mountains tilted the area. This provided the necessary relief to accomplish the erosion that produced the badlands we see today. The dark-colored material capping the badland ridges slightly to your left is lava from eruptions that occurred three to five million years ago. This hard lava cap has retarded erosion in many places and possibly explains why Manly Beacon, the high outcrop seen on the right when at the scenic lookout, is much higher than other portions of the badlands. Manly Beacon was named in honor of William L. Manly, who along with John Rogers, guided members of the ill-fated Forty-niners out of Death Valley during the gold rush of 1849.
The primary source of borate minerals gathered from Death Valley's playas is Furnace Creek Formation. The Formation is made up of over 5000 feet (1500 m) of mudstone, siltstone, and conglomerate. The borates were concentrated in these lakebeds from hot spring waters and altered rhyolite from nearby volcanic fields.
Reference
- Interpretive sign at Zabriskie Point by the National Park Service (adapted public domain text)
- USGS: Death Valley geology field trip, Harmony Borax Works (http://geology.wr.usgs.gov/docs/parks/deva/fthar3.html)
External links
Zabriskie Point is also a 1970 film by Michelangelo Antonioni. The soundtrack album, Zabriskie Point features music from various artists, including Pink Floyd, The Youngbloods, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.