Death Valley beckons with its beauty

Winter months in Death Valley are soothing and spectacular. The sky is cloudless, the air perfumed and the scenery is unforgettable. Since 1850, Death Valley has been calling people. In 1849, a party of emigrants strayed off-course into Death Valley, where many of them died. That's how the valley got its name. Then borax was discovered in Death Valley and pictures of the 20-mule teams hauling borax became as well known as Aunt Jemima on pancake mix boxes. Rumors persisted -- Death Valley was the hottest place on earth. It was so far below sea level, the air became thick and unbreathable. There was no animal life or birds or vegetation, just salt and blistering sand. Deadly gas filled the valley. There were bones of ill-fated prospectors all over the valley floor. No one who wasn't crazy entered Death Valley, and those who did were crazy from the infernal heat when they came out. And then came tales of another Death Valley intruder, but this one was different. Death Valley Scotty survived the heat and even built himself a castle in the north end of the valley. Stories go that he came out of his hideaway every now and then with his pockets bulging with gold. A secret mine? Yes, many say. No, say others -- his rich partner, Walter Johnson, was the gold mine. Scotty lived and died a mystery.

Oh, yes, there is some truth to those stories about Death Valley. There also is error. Scotty knew Death Valley well, but there were many others who knew it better -- the American Indians who lived in the area hundreds of years before Scotty or anyone else was here. The Spaniards were working silver mines in the mountains that surround Death Valley. Some of the emigrants lived to write books about their experiences. In the 1870s, mines began to wrest precious minerals from the hills. They mined gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, and then borax. Gem hunters have been crawling over the alluvial fans and washes for years. Boom towns erupted into life, and like the proverbial bubble, burst and sunk into the earth once more. In 1906, there were over 1,000 people living in Skidoo. From their mountain-top aerie, they looked into the scorching sink of Death Valley and saw freighters bringing their wagons along the old road from Bullfrog to the sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells. Rhyolite, in Nevada, was another big boom town. It boasted 8,000 residents in 1907, three railroads, many buildings built of concrete, electricity, plenty of saloons and a bank. Today, there's not much left -- the skeletons of buildings, sagging telephone poles, splintered wood and purpled glass, but she was some town while she lasted! Memories -- that's what Death Valley lived on, memories of past glory. But the tourists who come to Death Valley today return home with a different set of memories, memories of beauty and grandeur. Death Valley is in southeastern California. It is part of the Great Basin of the American Desert. This astonishing arid sink, the Great Basin, is spread over an area of 209,000 square miles in Nevada, California, Oregon and Utah. There are thousands of streams in the Great Basin, but none reach the sea. It is a land where rivers are upside down and the land is eternally thirsty. The plunging water course has cut deep canyons in the mountain ranges and worn once towering peaks away to insignificant hills. A billion or a million years it took, but that's just the blink of an eye on Nature's time clock. Even today, the thirst of the Great Basin remains unquenched. The deepest trough in the region, Death Valley, still burns with this thirst.

Three immense deserts, the Colorado, the Mojave, and Death Valley, comprise the southern end of the Great Basin. The Colorado Desert begins in the San Bernardino Mountains and stretches to the Salton Sea. North of that is the Mojave Desert, which encompasses the Cottonwood, San Bernardino, Chocolate and Chuckwalla mountains running east and west between Silurian Lake and Silver Lake. Across this low divide is Death Valley. The Panamint Mountains loom on the west, with the Black, Grapevine and Funeral mountains to the east. Between is the 120-mile stretch of Death Valley.

The floor of Death Valley is harsh and barren. Near Furnace Creek is a gigantic bed of salt 40 miles long. It rises in castle-like pinnacles and pillars to form a sparkling fairyland. Stories tell of sounding for the depth of the salt and going down over 1,000 feet with no end in sight.

North of the salt beds is a soft flowing stream called Salt Creek. The water is a clear, salt-saturated solution where some tiny pup-fish make their home. Behind this marvelous desert stream, the horizon is a haze of lavender, soft blue and mocha.

Death Valley has sand storms all the year around. Sometimes, the wind blows so fiercely that a man cannot retain his footing. The hot wind carrying blinding sand sweeps through the valley, blotting out the vivid colors of the hills. A few minutes or a few hours later, the wind is gone and the valley is at peace again.

Spring, fall and winter are the best times to visit Death Valley, although I have been there many times in July and August and enjoyed it. In April, though, the wild flowers are ablaze and a more spectacular sight you will never see! Once famous for its perils, the valley has now become famous for its beauty. Artists, photographers, writers, poets, hikers, walkers -- all who seek quiet and grandeur come to Death Valley. The geologist hikes around piecing together the story of the valley's creation. Others seek traces of early man. When they have completed their scientific studies, they will only have proved a story handed down by the ancient American Indians: "All the gods warned them to stop killing of brother and brother. Unless the wars are stopped, the gods would step in and in their terrible way put an end to the discord. But the warning voice of the gods went unheeded. The fights, killing and plundering went on. The gold punished the Indians by blowing the tops off the mountains and turning the molten lava their way, cutting off all escape. The lava cut a great trough, loaded the clear waters with salt and dried up the plants and trees. Then they stopped the rain and poured in only sand, leaving Death Valley."

Go there now or in March or April and soak up the beauty. You'll return with a new lease on life.

Florine Lawlor is a native Las Vegan and a former writer for the Las Vegas Sun and Senior Press.