Titus Canyon
Encyclopedia
Titus Canyon is a deep, narrow gorge cut into the steep face of the Grapevine Mountains
to the east of Death Valley
in the Mojave Desert
of southeastern California
. The canyon
features limestone
rock formations, petroglyph
s, and wildlife of various kinds.
relatively recently, most of the rocks that make up the range are over half a billion years old. The gray rocks lining the walls of the western end of Titus Canyon are Cambrian
age (570–505 million years old) limestone. These ancient Paleozoic
rocks formed at a time when the Death Valley area was submerged beneath tropical seas. By the end of the Precambrian
, the continental edge of North America
had been planed off by erosion
to a gently rounded surface of low relief. The rise and fall of the Cambrian seas periodically shifted the shoreline eastward, flooding the continent, then regressed westward, exposing the limestone layers to erosion. The sediments have since been upturned, upfolded (forming anticline
s), downfolded (forming syncline
s) and folded back onto themselves (forming recumbent folds).
Although some of the limestone exposed in the walls of Titus Canyon originated from thick mats of algae
(stromatolite
s) that thrived in the warm, shallow Death Valley seas, most of the gray limestone shows little structure. Thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) of this limey goo were deposited in the Death Valley region. Similar limestone layers may be seen at Lake Mead National Recreation Area
and at the bottom of the Grand Canyon
.
At one of the bends in the canyon, megabreccia
can be seen.
Native Americans carved petroglyph
s on some of the rock faces of Titus Canyon, especially at spring
s and other locations of interest.
Several different types of flowers, including the sacred datura
, inhabit the area. Desert Bighorn Sheep
herds live in Titus Canyon, and the Funeral Mountains, particularly in the Klare Spring area of the canyon.
in Death Valley National Park
. It can be entered on foot from the west or by four-wheel-drive vehicle from the east. Road access is just west of the town of Beatty, Nevada
. The drive is several miles long and can take more than an hour at a leisurely pace. The road is closed during the winter months when there is snow in the pass to the canyon. Vehicle travel is allowed in only one direction through Titus Canyon, from Nevada Highway 374 (Daylight Pass Road, 2 miles east of the park boundary) to the western end of the canyon.
Adjacent to the canyon proper is Leadfield
, a former mining town
and now ghost town
where in the 1920s prospectors
mined for ore
after hearing exaggerated claims that lead
would be easy to find and the living conditions in the area would be easy to endure. Another mining town-ghost town dating from the early 20th century, Rhyolite, Nevada
, on the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad
, is also nearby to the east.
Grapevine Mountains
The Grapevine Mountains are located along the eastern border of California in the United States. The mountain range is about long and lies in a northwest-southeasterly direction along the Nevada-California state line. The range reaches an elevation of at Grapevine Peak, near Phinney Canyon on the...
to the east of Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
in the Mojave Desert
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, in the United States...
of southeastern California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. The canyon
Canyon
A canyon or gorge is a deep ravine between cliffs often carved from the landscape by a river. Rivers have a natural tendency to reach a baseline elevation, which is the same elevation as the body of water it will eventually drain into. This forms a canyon. Most canyons were formed by a process of...
features limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
rock formations, petroglyph
Petroglyph
Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...
s, and wildlife of various kinds.
Geology
Although the Grapevine Mountains were upliftedTectonic uplift
Tectonic uplift is a geological process most often caused by plate tectonics which increases elevation. The opposite of uplift is subsidence, which results in a decrease in elevation. Uplift may be orogenic or isostatic.-Orogenic uplift:...
relatively recently, most of the rocks that make up the range are over half a billion years old. The gray rocks lining the walls of the western end of Titus Canyon are Cambrian
Cambrian
The Cambrian is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, lasting from Mya ; it is succeeded by the Ordovician. Its subdivisions, and indeed its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for Wales, where Britain's...
age (570–505 million years old) limestone. These ancient Paleozoic
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon, spanning from roughly...
rocks formed at a time when the Death Valley area was submerged beneath tropical seas. By the end of the Precambrian
Precambrian
The Precambrian is the name which describes the large span of time in Earth's history before the current Phanerozoic Eon, and is a Supereon divided into several eons of the geologic time scale...
, the continental edge of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
had been planed off by erosion
Erosion
Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...
to a gently rounded surface of low relief. The rise and fall of the Cambrian seas periodically shifted the shoreline eastward, flooding the continent, then regressed westward, exposing the limestone layers to erosion. The sediments have since been upturned, upfolded (forming anticline
Anticline
In structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is convex up and has its oldest beds at its core. The term is not to be confused with antiform, which is a purely descriptive term for any fold that is convex up. Therefore if age relationships In structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is...
s), downfolded (forming syncline
Syncline
In structural geology, a syncline is a fold, with younger layers closer to the center of the structure. A synclinorium is a large syncline with superimposed smaller folds. Synclines are typically a downward fold, termed a synformal syncline In structural geology, a syncline is a fold, with younger...
s) and folded back onto themselves (forming recumbent folds).
Although some of the limestone exposed in the walls of Titus Canyon originated from thick mats of algae
Algae
Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...
(stromatolite
Stromatolite
Stromatolites or stromatoliths are layered accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria ....
s) that thrived in the warm, shallow Death Valley seas, most of the gray limestone shows little structure. Thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) of this limey goo were deposited in the Death Valley region. Similar limestone layers may be seen at Lake Mead National Recreation Area
Lake Mead National Recreation Area
Lake Mead National Recreation Area is located in southern Nevada and northwestern Arizona. The centerpieces of the National Recreation Area are its two large reservoirs: Lake Mead and Lake Mohave. These lakes cater to boaters, swimmers, sunbathers, and fishermen while the surrounding desert rewards...
and at the bottom of the Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in the United States in the state of Arizona. It is largely contained within the Grand Canyon National Park, the 15th national park in the United States...
.
At one of the bends in the canyon, megabreccia
Breccia
Breccia is a rock composed of broken fragments of minerals or rock cemented together by a fine-grained matrix, that can be either similar to or different from the composition of the fragments....
can be seen.
Natural and Human history
TimbishaTimbisha
The Timbisha are a Native American tribe federally recognized as the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. They are known as the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and are located in south central California, near the Nevada border.-History:The Timbisha have lived in the Death Valley region of...
Native Americans carved petroglyph
Petroglyph
Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...
s on some of the rock faces of Titus Canyon, especially at spring
Spring (hydrosphere)
A spring—also known as a rising or resurgence—is a component of the hydrosphere. Specifically, it is any natural situation where water flows to the surface of the earth from underground...
s and other locations of interest.
Several different types of flowers, including the sacred datura
Datura wrightii
Datura wrightii or Sacred Datura is the name of a poisonous perennial plant and ornamental flower of southwestern North America. It is sometimes used as a hallucinogen. Datura wrightii is classified as a deliriant and an anticholinergic....
, inhabit the area. Desert Bighorn Sheep
Desert Bighorn Sheep
The Desert Bighorn Sheep is a subspecies of Bighorn Sheep that occurs in the desert Southwest regions of the United States and in the northern regions of Mexico. The trinomial of this species commemorates the American naturalist Edward William Nelson...
herds live in Titus Canyon, and the Funeral Mountains, particularly in the Klare Spring area of the canyon.
Access and nearby points of interest
Titus Canyon is located on the east side of Death ValleyDeath Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
in Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park is a national park in the U.S. states of California and Nevada located east of the Sierra Nevada in the arid Great Basin of the United States. The park protects the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and contains a diverse desert environment of salt-flats, sand dunes,...
. It can be entered on foot from the west or by four-wheel-drive vehicle from the east. Road access is just west of the town of Beatty, Nevada
Beatty, Nevada
Beatty is a census-designated place along the Amargosa River in Nye County in the U.S. state of Nevada. U.S. Route 95 runs through the CDP, which lies between Tonopah, about to the north, and Las Vegas, about to the southeast. State Route 374 connects Beatty to Death Valley National Park, about ...
. The drive is several miles long and can take more than an hour at a leisurely pace. The road is closed during the winter months when there is snow in the pass to the canyon. Vehicle travel is allowed in only one direction through Titus Canyon, from Nevada Highway 374 (Daylight Pass Road, 2 miles east of the park boundary) to the western end of the canyon.
Adjacent to the canyon proper is Leadfield
Leadfield, California
Leadfield was an unincorporated community, and historic mining town in Inyo County, California. It is now a ghost town. It is located in Titus Canyon in the Grapevine Mountains, east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park. Leadfield lies at an elevation of 4058 feet...
, a former mining town
Mining town
A mining community, also known as a mining town or a mining camp, is a community that houses miners. Mining communities are usually created around a mine or a quarry for the extraction or smeltering of ore.-United States:...
and now ghost town
Ghost town
A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...
where in the 1920s prospectors
Prospecting
Prospecting is the physical search for minerals, fossils, precious metals or mineral specimens, and is also known as fossicking.Prospecting is a small-scale form of mineral exploration which is an organised, large scale effort undertaken by mineral resource companies to find commercially viable ore...
mined for ore
Ore
An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element....
after hearing exaggerated claims that lead
Lead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
would be easy to find and the living conditions in the area would be easy to endure. Another mining town-ghost town dating from the early 20th century, Rhyolite, Nevada
Rhyolite, Nevada
Rhyolite is a ghost town in Nye County, in the U.S. state of Nevada. It is located in the Bullfrog Hills, about northwest of Las Vegas, near the eastern edge of Death Valley. The town began in early 1905 as one of several mining camps that sprang up after a prospecting discovery in the surrounding...
, on the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad
Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad
The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, the T&T, was a class II railroad extending through remote reaches of the Mojave Desert from the Santa Fe Railway railhead at Ludlow, California, through Death Valley and Amargosa Valley, terminating at the Mining towns of Tonopah and Goldfield in the Great Basin...
, is also nearby to the east.