Death Valley National Park

Early travelers approaching Death Valley felt intense heat rising from the valley floor and feared they had reached the gates of hell, while even their horses reportedly refused to move forward in the hot air. Hells Gate became a historic gateway to Death Valley and a major east-west route through a vast and challenging landscape known for its intense beauty, diversity, and solitude. The area lies within the Basin and Range Province, which extends from Utah to California and from Idaho to Mexico, where north-south-trending basins and ranges formed as the Earth's crust stretched and cracked while the West Coast slowly pulled away from the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau. Stress along fault zones forced large blocks of crust upward and pushed others downward, creating the alternating basins and mountain ranges visible across Death Valley and toward the Panamint Range on its western side.

California · United States