Background Information of Death Valley
Established as a National Park in 1933 under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Death Valley is the largest national park in the continental United States even though its total length is no more than approximately 100 miles in length. The valley is located in the Mojave Desert in eastern California and is surrounded by the Amargosa Range on the east, the Panamint Range on the west, and the Sylvania Mountains and Owlshead Mountains on the northern and southern boundaries. The topography of this region is varied and complex; and has a lengthy geologic history that explains why it is riddled with a variety of sand dunes, craters, and flood-carved canyons to name a few. The total area of the valley is
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Immediately following the upheaval, various collisions between the Pacific and Farralon plates resulted in the reversal of the original plate movement. At one point, some geologist believe that Death Valley and the surrounding mountains Panamint, Black, and Cottonwood were actually all stacked on top of each other and the separation lead to the present valley.
Precambrian: Death Valley Dawn - 1.8 billion to 570 million years ago
The oldest rocks found in the Death Valley region were formed in the Precambrian time period no more than 1.8 billion years ago during the latter half of the Proterozoic Eon. The rocks are seen on the steep face of the Black Mountains above the current area of Badwater and were formed via deposits of mud and sand from an ancient volcanic mountain belt. Sometime between 1.8 and 1.7 billion years ago, the volcanic and sedimentary rocks were severely altered when chemical or structural changes occurred because of intense heat or pressure from the Earth's core. Because of this process, any fossilized information about the region was lost making it impossible to truly understand the origin of the region. There is some debate on whether basalt or schist was the original and dominate rock in the region before it was transformed into contorted gneiss, but again, there is no way to prove either theory.
Evidence in the Mosaic Canyon; however, do suggest that the area was covered by a warm
When a person is in a stressful situation on instinct they have two options, fight or flight. In war the same is true. War is not always bayonets and bullets, it’s the decisions you make during times of hardship. A soldier has to make the decision whether to keep fighting for what they believe in no matter what the stakes or to flee. In December of 1777, George Washington and his troops arrived at Valley Forge. Since the summer of 1775, all has gone well for the Continental Army. More recently Washington was presumably unable to stop General Howe and his British soldiers from claiming the national capital of Philadelphia. With Howe and his army of approximately 18,000 comfortably quartered in Philadelphia,
The west coast of North America has been tectonically and volcanically active for billions of years. The Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California were born of volcanoes, and magma has been erupting in the Long Valley to the east of the mountains for over three million years (Bailey, et. al., 1989). However, the climactic eruption of the region occurred relatively recently in the region's geologic history. About 760,000 years ago, a huge explosion of magma warped the Eastern Sierra into the landscape that exists today. The eruption depleted a massive magma chamber below the earth's surface so that the ceiling of the chamber imploded, forming what is now known as
There was a lot of sick people, but there was not a lot of people dying from the sickness. Firstly, in document A it stated there was “3,989 people sick out of the 8,000” who were there. So what that is saying there was about 50% of soldiers sick and in the Winter it is common to be sick especially in those conditions. Secondly there were only “1,800 out of the 12,000 men died in Valley Forge”(doc A). What this is saying is that there is only a 15% chance of dying and a 85% chance of living which that is pretty good odds. Also in the background essay it says “today we know that most of the army survived the winter. So, I would take those odds and stay at Valley Forge.
Mesa Verde National Park on the Colorado Plateau contains many geological aspects of interest, including its sedimentary rock layers, its canyons, its alcoves utilized by ancient people and how these alcoves were formed. Mesa Verde National Park is located in the southwest corner of Colorado, close to the Four Corners area, on top of a high mesa overlooking the Mancos River (Harris et al. 2004). The park, covering 81 square miles, consists of several main sedimentary formations that are characteristic to the park (Encyclopedia Britannica 2015). Canyons are carved into the sedimentary rock, with the cave dwellings found high on their steep walls. These dwellings are an especially unique aspect to the Mesa Verde National Park, and are built out of large alcoves. The alcoves were produced by weathering and erosion of the sedimentary rock type. To better understand how these alcoves formed, we must understand the geology of Mesa Verde National Park and how it has developed over history.
Around 650 A.D., the Mesa Verdean peoples initiated construction of apartment-style homes, termed by Spanish explorers as pueblos. The Puebloan architecture is original in that it utilized the local stone and mud deposits of the region to maintain the structural integrity of their burgeoning developments. As this community evolved into the twelfth century, Mesa Verdeans further integrated the geology of their environment into their lifestyles by building homes, known as cliff dwellings, within the naturally formed alcoves of Mesa Verde. By the thirteenth century, the Mesa Verdeans vacated this region due to severe droughts and subsequent social instability. Despite the later abandonment of their cliff dwellings, it is clear that the geology of Mesa Verde National Park impacted the lives of the Ancestral Puebloans significantly. The following sections provide detailed information regarding the rock formations that make up the geological
“Exploring how you could make a bad situation worse can sometimes tell you what not to do”(Mackay). The Revolutionary War started in the winter time of 1777. The American soldiers were staying at Valley Forge. Valley Forge was the military camp 18 miles northwest of Philadelphia, where the American Continental Army spent the winter of during the American Revolutionary War. General Washington is the leader, and he brought several thousand soldiers with him. A reason I won’t re-enlist, is because General Washington compared Tyranny like hell. The next reason I won’t re-enlist is because the health is bad, and 2,500 died from getting sick. The last reason I won't re-enlist is because 6,887 people altogether got sick. I have
Our hike will start here, at the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We will go all the way to the bottom of the canyon. But first, a description of this area. The Grand Canyon is one on the most visited and studies sites for geologists on Earth. There are almost forty major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon. Some of these rocks layers are two hundred million years old or two billion years old. Most of the sediment that makes up the rocks was deposited by oceans and seas, which now, are long gone. We know this because there are many fossils and and other records on large bodies of water in the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon is found in the Colorado Plateau. The Colorado Plateau is lifted almost two miles, or four and a fifth kilometers. It started to lift up seventy-five million years ago. This started a mountain-building period of time called the Laramide orogeny. During this period, the Rocky Mountains were created. The main types of rocks found in the Grand Canyon are limestone, siltstone, shale, and sandstone. Many of the layers are made up of limestone. Some examples of these are the Kaibab Limestone, the Redwall Limestone the Temple Butte Limestone, and the Muav
Death Valley is a native American reservation located in Utah and approximately a 30 minute drive from the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground, a military installation less than 100 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah. On the early morning of March 15, 1968, thousands of sheep within the town started showing signs and symptoms of an odd, peculiar disease; they were unable to come to their feet and without the ability to keep their necks straight, soon after, they were lying dead in the farms across the town. This incident, which became known as The Dugway Proving Ground Accident, generated national attention, in an era marred by public political unrest and an American public highly suspicious of their government.
The Grand Canyon has plenty of volcanic rocks near the bottom and the top. ICR, Institute for Creative Research, has been involved in a project for years to date these volcanic rocks. this study has come a long way to show that many of the Grand Canyon strata could have formed rapidly, and that the erosion of the Canyon by the Colorado River has not been going on for millions of years.
Death Valley National Park is a national park in the United States. On the border of California and Nevada it takes up the Great Basin and Mojave deserts in the United States. The park is in the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and contains a desert environment of sand dunes valleys canyons and mountains. It is the largest national park in the 50 states. 91% of the park is wilderness area. It is the hottest and lowest of the national parks in the United States. The second lowest point in the Western Hemisphere is in Basin which is 282 feet below sea level. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have lived in that conditions for a long time like creosote bush bighorn sheep coyote and the Death Valley pupfish. Migration
The Rio Grande rift is superimposed on a region with a long and complex history of deformation and heating, which affects the location and com- position of the subsequent rift-related magmatism (Mack, Seager, Kieling, 1994).. The development of the Rio Grande rift formed part of a series of Cenozoic extensional events that affected the whole of the western USA. These events were contemporaneous with changes in motions of the Farallon and North American plates at the Pacific margin and are widely thought to be genetically related to them by processes such as back-arc spreading. Alternative hypotheses re- late extension to thermal relaxation and gravity spreading of Laramide thickened crust and magmatism to active asthenospheric upwelling.
The oldest rocks exposed are arkosic sandstone and shale, and small amounts of thin-bedded chert and altered volcanic rocks, of the Upper Jurassic Franciscan formation. Large masses of serpentine and smaller plugs and dikes of gabbro and diorite intrude these sediments; glaucophane schists and their unusual mineralogical assemblages are developed locally. The series as exposed on the San Jose quadrangle consists chiefly of sandstone, shale, and jasper; with occasional bed of heavy conglomerate. Scattered here and there throughout its area are small patches of greenstone, probably of tuffaceous origin. In several localities it is associated with serpentine, eclogite, and diorite, each of which is supposedly intrusive into it. However, large areas of practically unaltered sandstone and shale exist in what is known
In Midway, Utah, there is distinct geologic activity. The area features a collection of rocks spanning through multiple time periods. Also, the hydrothermal activity in the region is extensive. The hot springs in the area are relatively young, and distinct because of their location and formation. A closer examination of the hot springs shows that the springs are mineral rich, and form a chemical sedimentary rock.
It was a hot day in Death Valley. In Death Valley there was Donna, Gina, Jenny. They couldn’t leave Death Valley because their car ran out of gas. So they saw,found a campsite with three trailer’s their and one trailer there was beer, and old can food. Another trailer had old strawberries, and a radio and they touched the radio and strawberries. The last trailer they found a sink and drunk the water first they said “it was hot water.”Then they say “it is the worst water i’d ever tasted but also the best.” Then it all happen they were stuck for days without a phone, a shower,bath.
Our first stop today is Vishnu Schist. Exactly how Grand Canyon was made is controversial and we have not been able to know the specific year or identify the process on how it was made. Grand Canyons’ stratigraphy was deposed somewhere in between 2 billion years and 230 billion years ago. The oldest rock formation is the Vishnu schist that is on the bottom of the all the rock basements, while the youngest rocks, the Kaibab plateau is on the top. The Vishnu basement is made of gneiss, granite and schist. When plate tectonic of the ocean floor sediment “crashed” and basalt with the North American continent it resulted the Vishnu mountains. The black and silver mica Schist of the Vishnu was formed under pressure and heat when sedimentary and igneous rocks was metamorphosed.