So Where's the Monument?

The Skidoo Mine perched into a mountain high above the Death Valley floor is typical of mining operations in the park. Some mines continued working after the monument was created. Photo by Jerry Bunin

DEATH VALLEY - There is no monument in Death Valley National Monument.

National monuments are part of the national park system, but aren't parks. Monuments are created by presidential decree (like The Pinnacles east of Soledad) while parks come from acts of Congress.

National monuments were originally supposed to preserve sites of historical or scientific interest, like Indian ruins and other places associated more with human activities than natural wonders.

Parks and monuments are just two of 15 types of areas administered by the National Park Service. There are also national lakes and seashores, battlefields and memorials and recreation areas.

Death Valley was supposed to be a park, but got sidetracked by some of the riches it housed and the dreams it inspired.

The monument's recorded history began with the 49ers who named Death Valley when they accidentally got lost in it. Some later returned as miners, digging borax from the floor, and gold and silver out of canyons rimming the basin.

Borax - a powdery cleansing agent used to make glass, porcelain and enamel - was carted by teams of 18 mules led by two horses for 165 miles over 10 days to Mojave for train shipment.

The shipping difficulties and the number of tourists booking rooms in hotels built to house miners convinced the borax companies more money could be made from recreation.

However, other mining interests, especially gold and silver seekers still active early this century, controlled enough votes in Congress to block the creation of Death Valley National Park.

So President Franklin Roosevelt created the Death Valley National Monument in 1933, even though it's not truly a valley.

Most valleys are carved by rivers and tend to be V-shaped, except for places like Yosemite, where the scraping of glaciers rounded the Vs into a U-shape.

Death Valley - 100 miles long and 5 to 25 miles wide - is actually a graben or rift valley, created by land sinking between two faults in the Earth's surface.

Land masses moving horizontally slipped under those surging vertically, causing the deep depression now sitting between steep mountains around Death Valley.

The floor is still falling and the mountains keep rising, and rain erodes the mountains, sending debris down to fill the basin.

It's an ongoing process, a monument to natural forces at work.