Tourism - Finding Desert Solitude

Death Valley National Monument was created in 1933 after years of effort to protect it from mining and other interests. However, it wasn’t until 1994 that Congress designated Death Valley a national park. One of the reasons for the long wait was that the desert had negative connotations for many Americans and was often seen an inhospitable and threatening wilderness wasteland, not a national treasure.

Fast forward to our modern, fast-paced world. Today, many people travel to the park specifically to find the solitude of that same daunting wilderness. At over 3.4 million acres, Death Valley National Park is the largest national park in the lower 48 states. Here it is not hard to find places devoid of people, where your only company is the heat, the rocks, the quiet, and open space.

 

Frasher Family at Dantes View - 1928

Commercial photographer Burton Frasher, Sr. was one of the Southwest’s most prolific commercial photographers. Born in 1888, he married Josephine in 1912 and started a commercial photography business in Lordsburg (now LaVerne), California in 1914. Early in their marriage, the Frashers rode around the American West on an Indian motorcycle with Josephine riding in the sidecar and Burton's large format camera riding between them.

Frasher focused on “Main Street” views of small southwestern towns and ghost towns, photographing roadside cafes, churches, bridges, horse shows, and county fairs (for years he was the official photographer of the Los Angeles County Fair). Frasher turned many of his photos into postcards. During his 40-year career, he produced 60,000 negatives and millions of postcards, and cemented an important legacy to the visual history of the southwest. Frasher died in 1955.

 

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Credit: Photographer: Burton Frasher; Courtesy HJG Frashers Fotos Collection

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Desert Road Between Scotty's Castle and Stovepipe Wells - 1930

Death Valley National Park has 300 miles of paved roads, 300 miles of improved dirt roads, and several hundred miles of unmaintained 4x4 roads. Crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps graded 500 miles of those roads in the nine years (1933 – 1942) they were present in the then national monument. Grading rocky and sandy soils in very hot temperatures made for extreme working conditions but their work was essential for making the park accessible.

 

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Credit: Photographer: Burton Frasher; Courtesy HJG Frashers Fotos Collection

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

20-Mule Team Canyon and Car - ca. 1930s

Twenty Mule Team Canyon is situated in an ancient lakebed, part of the Furnace Creek Formation. The borax located in the lakebed deposits was more profitable to mine than those on the floor of Death Valley at Harmony. Mining claims were established as early as 1882.

Although twenty-mule team wagons were only used for six years to haul borax out of Death Valley, they have been an iconic representation of the mineral and the park ever since.

 

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Car in Golden Canyon - ca. 1930

Golden Canyon is part of the badlands topography west of Zabriskie Point. The yellow earth in the foreground is formed of fine-grained rocks that settled in the ancient lakebed, and the eroded cliffs of Red Cathedral in the background are a conglomerate rock that accumulated in alluvial fans of the Furnace Creek Formation.

 

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Credit: Photographer: Branson DeCou; UCSC McHenry Library, Branson DeCou Archive

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Automobile in Titus Canyon - ca. 1930s

27-mile one-way Titus Canyon Road was built by C.C. Julian in 1925 to provide access to the mines at Leadville. It came with a price tag of around $60,000, but helped him promote the mining of lead ore among the dramatic paleozoic era formations of the canyon.

 

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Credit: Photographer: Charles C. Pierce; USC Digital Library, California Historical Society

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Entrance to Golden Canyon - 1934

Early in the twentieth century, automobiles made Death Valley and the Mojave Desert region much more accessible to tourists. With the establishment of Death Valley National Monument in 1933, roads were graded into some unlikely places, including Golden Canyon. Today, many of these canyon routes are closed to vehicles and hikers can more easily enjoy the peace and solitude.

 

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Credit: Photographer: Burton Frasher; Courtesy HJG Frashers Fotos Collection

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Hanaupah Canyon Entrance and Telescope Peak - 1934

The rugged Hanaupah Canyon Road rises 3,500’ from West Side Road, with great views of the valley, Telescope Peak (11,049’), and the Panamint Range. A miner by the name of Shorty Borden (Alexander Zachariah Borden), wandered into the canyon in the late 1880’s and found a few minor strikes of gold.

While he did find some gold, Borden is best known for discovering a water source at the foot of the Hanaupah Canyon road. The well he established became known as “Shorty’s Well”.

 

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Credit: Photographer: Burton Frasher; Courtesy HJG Frashers Fotos Collection

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Car Parked at Zabriskie Point - ca. 1935

Just before the Furnace Creek Inn was to open in 1927, Pacific Borax Company executives had a number of scenic points and roads built to entice visitors to experience the desert scenery. Zabriskie Point, built atop a small hill overlooking the badlands and the Panamint Range to the west, was named in honor of the president of the company at that time, Christian Zabriskie, a protégé of Stephen Mather.

Three to five million years ago, the view across the valley to the Panamint Range would have been filled with Lake Manly. Over the years, silt and volcanic ash washed into the lake. As earthquakes caused the layers to uplift and as the lake receded, the soft rocks were exposed and eroded by periodic flash floods to form the wrinkled landscape we see today.

 

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Credit: Courtesy Rio Tinto Borax

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Tourists at Badwater - ca. 1939

Badwater is the lowest point in North American at 282 feet below sea level. The pool is not poisonous, just salty, as is indicated by the presence of pickleweed, aquatic insects, and larvae. The pool at Badwater is home to the tiny Badwater Snail.

The Amargosa River drains into Badwater; its origins in the ice age snow from central Nevada mountain. The ancient water seeps into porous limestone bedrock, and begins a slow flow through a regional aquifer, emerging at Badwater along the faultline at the base of the Black Mountains.

The pool was named when a surveyor mapping the area could not get his mule to drink from the pool. He wrote on his map that the spring had “bad water”.

 

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Credit: Photographer: Burton Frasher; Courtesy HJG Frashers Fotos Collection

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Artist and Car in Golden Canyon - ca. 1949

Artist Edith Stellman sketches the badlands topography of Golden Canyon. The quiet heat and shade of the late afternoon evokes a peaceful calm, inspiring for artists and poets.

Fans of Star Wars and The Mandalorian may notice familiar terrain in this and neighboring canyons.

 

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Credit: California State Library, California History Room

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Credit: NPS/Ted Barone